


That Was Then, This Is Now

by PugMaster



Category: Degrassi High
Genre: (both offscreen), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Teen Romance, Teenager-Typical Language, canon-typical idiocy, the rare pair nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PugMaster/pseuds/PugMaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Divergent after 3x12 "Taking Off Part 2." When Spike and Wheels have a chance run-in at the hospital, neither of them expects things to change so much so fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The hospital is gray, but a bright gray, with strong halogen lights beating down on everything. It reeks of lemon disinfectant and drugstore flowers. He should have been out of here fifteen minutes ago, but the hospital sucked him back in like a whirlpool. _Okay,_ Wheels says to himself as he stands in front of the wall map. _I'm on the third floor, and the stairs are over there— is that the way I came in?_ The wall map says he's in the trauma ward, somehow, so he treks down the hall, back the way he came.

On the right side of the hall is a room that has a little plastic sign: McKAY, SHANE. The door is open, but what's behind it? So far all he's heard are rumors. He got mugged and beaten after the concert—the thugs broke his femurs for five bucks in change. No, he got kidnapped by terrorists and barely escaped with his life. No, he got run over by a train. Wheels knows which rumor is true. It's the one said in hushed tones at the edge of the hallways. He was stupid, they say. He only had to do acid once. Now he's here.

Wheels holds his breath and peeks in. Shane's in bed, eyes closed, hooked up to wires and tubes and who knows what else. Bruises cover his face, or at least the part of his face not hidden by his respirator. To the side of the room are a few chairs. Spike is sitting in one, staring at nothing in particular. Besides the baby she's holding, she's alone. She looks tiny.

He raps on the door frame. The sharp noise rings through the silence. Spike glances up after a second. "Can I come in?" he asks.

"Uh, sure, I guess. I was going to leave soon, but I think visiting hours are still going on." She could be talking about the weather.

He sits next to her. The baby is lying in her arms asleep, splayed like a starfish. "I haven't seen you around at school," she says. "I didn't think you heard about— about Shane."

"I got wind of it." The beeps of the heart monitor help fill the silence.

"It's nice that you came by to see him, then."

"I didn't really," he says. He doesn't know where to look. He can't look at Shane. Shane doesn't even look like himself, just like a hunk of meat. Then again, Spike's impossible to face. Her eyes are bright red. "My grandmother wanted me to talk to a shrink. A grief counselor type person." He shrugs. "So I was here anyway."

"Oh, Dr. Lewis? I think he's supposed to come by later." She sniffles a bit. "They don't know what's going to happen with him. I thought maybe if I brought Emma to see Shane, he might...might wake up to see her. I don't know." She sniffles a bit more and turns away.

Wheels runs through a few potential stale lines he could give her. Nothing new could help anyway. He decides on, "It could happen." _Wow, what a way with words, Wheels,_ he thinks.

"It won't." She sighs, and the hard edge of anger comes into her voice. "It was so stupid of him! What's going to happen if he dies? I mean, we didn't love each other, but he still had a daughter to think of! I don't know if I'll be able to support Emma any more. I know his parents won't help me. And Emma won't have him in her life. What if I have to give her up?"

"No!" Emma stretches a bit and makes a little annoyed squeak. Spike shushes her and huddles up against her. In a lower voice, he says, "Don't give her up."

"I just don't know what I'm going to do."

"It'll be okay," he says, and hesitantly puts an arm around her shoulder. "Emma's lucky to have one parent there for her."

"I guess."

"No, I mean it. It's important. She'll know someone's on her side all the time. Someone who really wants her. You take care of her, you feed her, you give her what she needs—"

"Wheels?" Spike half-smiles.

"Yeah?"

"You're hugging me."

"Oh, sorry." He drops his arm.

They sit for a while, silent, listening to the heart monitor. It's cold in the room. He wonders if it bothers Shane. There's nothing he can say. Spike hugs Emma like a teddy bear. Grade seven seems so far away, back when the worst thing they had to deal with was getting dates to the end-of-year dance.

"I don't know why he did it," Spike says in a small voice.

Wheels shrugs, drained. There's no answer. "He was high."

"I thought high people were just supposed to sit around and laugh at stupid stuff."

"That's pot. I don't know what acid does."

"Why would it make you want to jump off a bridge if you didn't already want to?" she says so quietly he can barely hear her. "Why would he want that?"

"You don't know that he jumped," he says. His attempt to sound gentle fails. "He might've fell."

"But he could have jumped, too." She sighs and holds her head in one hand. Emma slumps into her lap. "I should have let him spend more time with Emma. They never got to see each other. What if that was what did it? What if— what if he really wanted to die? How could I be such an _idiot?_ " She clenches her jaw.

"Hey, come on," he replies. He feels like he's treading water—helpless and not going anywhere. "You didn't push him, right?"

She eyes him suspiciously. "Right."

"Then it's not your fault. He chose to go to the concert, he chose to do acid. He might've jumped, he might've fallen, but either way you didn't do anything."

"I guess." She wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "I don't know."

"You don't have to know," he says. Even though not knowing is driving him crazy. Not knowing is exhausting.

Spike attempts a smile, but only says, "What time is it?"

Wheels checks his watch. "Six forty-five." He should care that he's late. Grandma will.

She winces. "I have to call my mother."

"There's a phone over there." Although he wouldn't want to use it either: it's on Shane's bedside table, six inches from his limp hand.

"I tried. It only makes calls within the hospital. Here," she says, plopping the sleeping Emma into his arms. "You hold her. I'll be back in five minutes."

He hasn't held a baby since his aunt had one, and that was back in elementary school. He tries to cradle her the way Spike was doing, with Emma lying down over his arm. Emma's head flops to one side. That doesn't look right. He tries to gently reposition her and ends up more or less throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her head lying on his shoulder. This seems better, he guesses, although he can't tell if Emma likes it or even notices. She still looks asleep. And she's drooling on his shoulder.

He can't help but look at Shane and wonder what it would be like if he were there. If he'd been tripping and jumped off that bridge. Who'd come to see him? Grandma and Grandpa. Joey and Snake. It's a short list, but Shane's has got to be shorter. He's not disliked, exactly, but he's not popular either. Quiet. Nice enough guy. And now he's here. One dumb mistake, and now he's here. Poor bastard.

And Spike's right: what if he dies? At this point it seems almost like a "when" instead of an "if." If or when he dies, his injuries won't even bother him any more. He'll be dead. That's it. But his parents and all the kids at school will remember it forever, the time Shane dropped acid and destroyed his future. And Spike, especially—she might not like him, but she must need him, at least some, for whatever he does for the baby—

The baby in question starts to cry. Wheels swears under his breath, then mentally swears at himself for cursing in front of a baby. Okay, she doesn't smell weird or anything— maybe she's hungry? Did Spike leave a bottle? Does Emma even still eat from a bottle? When do babies stop doing that? He hoists her up higher on his shoulder and pats her back, all the while trying to look at his watch. He half-hums, half-sings under his breath as he gets up and starts to pace with her.

"Are you singing 'Everybody Wants Something' to my daughter?" Spike's standing in the doorway.

He smiles. "Joey's rubbing off on me." He gifts Emma back to Spike. "I don't think she likes me much."

"She's just hungry," says Spike as she repositions the baby again. "Get me her bottle out of the diaper bag— it's under my chair."

He finds it underneath several sets of crisply folded baby clothes. "Here."

"Thanks." As she rests Emma against her hip with one arm and holds her bottle in the other hand, she says, "My mom said she can't drive me home. Some kind of 'wedding hair emergency.'" She rolls her eyes.

"I can walk you home," says Wheels, even though he doesn't know where she lives.

Her smile is weak. "That'd be nice. When do you need to be home?"

He checks his watch again. "Ten minutes ago. I'll call my grandma," he says as an afterthought.

Grandma doesn't seem to mind much that he's late because she's so overjoyed that he called to check in. Her exact words are, "Derek, you're turning over a new leaf." To him, it seems like a stretch.

Spike shows him the right way out of the hospital, and once they know how to leave, it's pretty easy, save a stroller-related mishap with the stairs.

"I haven't seen you much since the funeral," Spike says as they step out into the dull light of evening.

He exhales sharply. "Yeah."

"It's too bad. Everyone's been missing you."

"Yeah, well," he says, "not everyone." He shoves his hands in his pockets.

"Did you really run away from home?"

"I didn't run, I hitchhiked."

She looks at him like he has two heads. "Why?"

"I wanted to see Mike— uh, my birth dad. Stupid, I know." He braces himself for the usual litany of mistakes. There's so many she could point out. 

But she doesn't lay into him, even though she probably should. "It's not stupid. Well," she says, "hitchhiking was stupid. But I get wanting to see your dad."

"Do you...?" he starts, but cuts himself off before he says something dumb. Again.

"Yeah, sometimes I wonder about mine. Mom doesn't talk about him much. I never met him." She grabs the stroller a little tighter and looks down at Emma, who's apparently trying to shove her fist into her mouth. "Did you end up seeing yours?"

He looks out onto the quiet street, down onto the sidewalk, at his shoes— anywhere but at Spike and the baby. "Yep."

"How'd it go?"

He could explain it to her. If he wanted to dig it all up, he could recount the entire thing with Mike from the very start. How everything he ever said was a lie, designed to shove Wheels out of his life as fast as possible. But that'd be long and ugly and pointless. "He sucks."

"I'm sorry," Spike says quietly.

"Not your fault. It's his." 

She looks at him for a long second. "I hope Emma—” Emma, who's still drooling contentedly down the front of her clothes, doesn't seem to hear her name. "I hope Emma gets to see Shane again."

"He'll pull through." He sounds more confident than he feels. Shane has to pull through, right? He can't die.

"I hope so. But... That grief counselor. Is he good?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he's fine." He can't exactly be _good_ under the circumstances, but the counselor definitely isn't as bad as he could be. "I thought it'd be like the optometrist's. You know, 'Which picture makes you feel worse about your dead parents? One or two?'"

She laughs bitterly. "I've never been to the optometrist."

"Yeah, and you won't need a grief counselor either. Which street's yours?" he asks, standing at the intersection.

"Straight ahead."

They trudge along. Her neighborhood is a good long walk away from his. Grandma would be tearing her hair out if he hadn't called. "Here's my building."

"Uh, should I walk you in?" He's never walked a girl home before.

"That's okay." She leans over the stroller. "Can you wave bye-bye, Emma?"

Emma babbles at him and flaps her hand. Wheels can't help but smile.

"Wheels?"

He steps toward her.

She stands on her toes and pecks him on the cheek. "Thanks."


	2. Chapter 2

"You _kissed_ him?"

"Liz!" Spike glares at her. "It wasn't a _kiss_ kiss. Just on the cheek." She glances at the wave of people flowing past their lockers and scans for any sign of eavesdropping. A big crowd is stampeding through. Thankfully.

Liz yanks her algebra textbook out of her locker. "But why?"

"I was emotional, okay?" A blush starts to spread up her neck. What does Liz know about guys, anyway?

"You'll be a lot more emotional when he ends up hurting you." Liz knits her eyebrows together.

"We're not even dating! I just kissed him, once, on the cheek. It's not like I proposed or anything." Spike hoists up her stack of books easily. One benefit of having a baby: new arm strength. "And anyway, that's an if, not a when."

"What if he thinks you like him now? What would you do if he asked you out?" She fires the questions out, one after another.

"I'd probably have to tell him no," Spike replies, "but only because I have to stay in with Emma."

"So you do like him?" Liz’s eyes widen.

"Kind of," she says. "He's really cute."

"He's got stupid hair." Liz snorts.

"He's still cute. And he was so sweet yesterday—he walked me home, and he listened to me, and he was so good with Emma..." Spike leans her back against her locker, pressing her books to her chest. "You should've seen him. He was like a different person." Across the hall, Wheels is chatting with Joey and Snake. Is he remembering yesterday too?

Liz’s voice is pulled tight like a rope. "He's a delinquent. He ran away from home!"

"He didn't run, he hitchhiked." Spike smiles to herself.

Liz rolls her eyes. "That's worse."

“I know," she concedes. "It— never mind." Liz won’t get it. It’s not her fault. She just wasn’t there.

"What if he thinks you're easy?"

Spike’s blush washes over her face. ”I'm not easy!"

"I know that, but what if he doesn't? I mean, you have the baby. And he is friends with Joey. You don't want him to go out with you just for that.” Liz sounds like she almost feels sorry for her: _Poor, naive Spike. She doesn’t know how boys are._

"I don't know." Spike sighs. "It doesn't seem like him. Maybe I'll talk to Heather and Erica about it. They've known him longer than I have."

Liz shrugs. They start to walk toward math. _If there's one thing to cure a crush, it's algebra,_ Spike thinks.

"Spike!" She turns around. It's Wheels, walking fast across the hall toward her, carrying his books under his arm like a football. Liz gives him a patented Liz Glare. _Well, two can play at this game._ She gives her a quick "shut up" glance. If Wheels notices, he doesn’t let on.

"Hi, Wheels," Spike says. Joey and Snake are across the hall whispering to each other. "Thanks for walking me home yesterday."

"No problem," he replies. He coughs.

“Don’t you have geography now?” Liz’s voice is flat. “What are you doing here by the math rooms?”

“He's in our math class, Liz,” Spike snaps.

He glances sideways toward Liz. Somehow he manages not to glare at her. "Uh, I came over to see if maybe Spike would want to see a movie? With me?" He turns back to Spike. “I mean, you don’t have to.”

"Like a date?" She narrows her eyes. _Please don’t let Liz be right,_ she thinks. _Not after I snapped at her._

"Uh, sort of. It could be a date. If you want." He leans against her locker on one hand. Liz snickers, so he straightens up and shoves his hands in his pockets. Too bad. It made him eye level with her. "I can pick you up Friday afternoon."

Friday. Her babysitter's day off. "I can't," she says. "I have to stay in with Emma." She glances over at Liz, who gives her a look that says  _I have a life._ Right. Of course she wouldn't want to babysit. 

"Let's go," Liz mumbles. She starts walking toward math class. Tentatively, Spike starts to follow.

"Hang on!" Spike stops. "I have a VCR!"

She turns around. "What good does that do?"

"I was thinking you could maybe come over and we could watch a movie at home instead. You can bring Emma." He keeps glancing at Liz, looking for the approval she won’t give.

"Bring Emma to a date? At your house?" Her stomach flips. She can't say why.

"It doesn't have to be a date." He shrugs and shuffles a little from foot to foot. "I was just wondering. I mean, whatever's good for you."

Spike laughs. _Not a date. Sure, you're a dork like this all the time. Totally._ Liz's uncertain stare snaps her out of it. "I don't know. I don't think my mother would let me."

"Oh," he says. "That's okay, I guess." He gives her half a smile.

"Hang on." She pulls out a pen. A glitter pen. Perfect. "Give me your hand." He obliges and she scrawls her number on the back of it. "I'll ask. Call me later. Is seven okay?"

"Uh, it should be. I'll call you then?"

"Sounds good." She smiles at him, and he smiles back, a bit badly paced. He takes a second to realize he needs to get to class before he leaves.

"He invited you to his _house!"_ Liz hisses.

"Only because of the baby. He won't try anything."

"He might."

"And he might not."

The bell rings. Spike and Liz have to sprint to math.

As expected, math is boring. It's almost fascinating in its boringness. How can something so important be so dull all the time? Her mind wanders. _Does he really think I'm easy? Would he do something?_ Probably not in front of the baby, she decides. _Will his grandparents be home? What will Mom think?_

"Christine?"

She blinks. "Huh?"

"For the second time, how would you factor the problem on the board?" Mr. Garcia drones.

It's an easy enough problem. Or it would be, if she'd been listening. "I don't know." She slumps in her chair.

Mr. Garcia sighs heavily. "Lucy?"

Erica leans over her desk. "You okay, Spike?" she whispers.

"I'll tell you later." Across the room, she sees Wheels trying to pretend he wasn't looking at her, and smiles.

* * *

She practically sprints up the steps home. A small part of her hopes that it'll make seven o' clock come faster. Mom is home making dinner: meatloaf for herself and Spike, and rewarmed formula and mashed vegetables for Emma. She's bent over the mixture now, spoon in hand. "Did you hear that? I thought I heard an elephant coming up the stairs."

Spike grins at her and swipes the bottle. "Where's Emma?"

"Napping. Like she always is when you get out of school. The babysitter's son is sick, so it's just Emma tonight." Mom looks her up and down. "Are you feeling all right? What's gotten into you?"

"Actually, I was wondering…" It can’t hurt to ask. She adjusts her hair. "After I was born… did you ever have any more boyfriends?"

"Not many," Mom replies, still absorbed in her meatloaf. "Remember James? I dated him for a while, but we broke up before you started senior kindergarten. Why do you ask?"

"Well, this boy from school sort of asked me on a date for Friday," Spike says. "So I was wondering if it would be okay if I dated while Emma was still a baby."

Mom hesitates. She takes a second to find her words. "I think Emma is the least of your worries. Are you sure you should be dating anyone so soon after Shane's...accident?"

She hadn't thought of that. On one hand, she and Shane aren’t—weren’t—married or anything. They hadn’t even been exclusive for very long before The Party. But just because she doesn’t like him anymore doesn’t mean she can pretend she never did. _Is it only because of Emma?_ she asks herself. Or is it because he’s so sick? Is she being disloyal somehow? She can’t explain it. The only thought coming to mind is the memory of Shane holding Emma at Christmastime.

And that’s before she considers how Wheels is mixed up in the whole thing. If she’s hanging onto a memory of dating Shane or an ideal of Emma’s father or whatever else is slamming inside her head, is that fair to Wheels? Why does he want to go out with her, anyway? Does he really think she's easy? All her thoughts blend together, indistinguishable from each other, until there's only a sludgy mix of uneasiness inside her head.

"I don't know," she finally admits. "I don’t know what I would’ve said if he'd asked before. I just think now, it might be nice. You don’t think it’s wrong, do you?"

Mom is quiet for a long time. "I think going on a date or two is okay," says Mom, "but you shouldn't rush into anything serious while everything is fresh. Be careful."

She nods. Slowly things are starting to solidify. This is going to work out. "So I can go out Friday?"

"I can't watch Emma Friday; I'm working late. You know that." Mom says it easily, the resignation skillfully hidden as she stares down at the food. 

"Well… he kind of said I could bring her along." 

Mom looks up, wary. "What kind of date is this?"

"Just a movie." Technically.

Mom sighs. Spike recognizes the sound— it sounds like nights spent staying up with the baby. "For heaven's sake, Christine, why would you ever bring a baby to a movie theater?"

"He has a VCR," she blurts out. "We were going to watch a tape at his house."

Slowly, Mom sets the spoon down and studies Spike's face for traces of insanity. "Now that's what I'd call rushing into things!" she says, enunciating like she's talking to Emma.

"Mom, we wouldn't do anything wrong. His grandparents would be there," she adds, even though she doesn't know if that's true. "Please? It's free, it's fun, the baby will be fine…"

Mom sighs. "I suppose it'd be okay. I'd like to talk to this boy before you go, of course. What's his name?"

"Wh— Derek."

"Well, I'd definitely want to talk to Derek at some point. Maybe not Friday, if I won't be there, but some time."

"He's supposed to call at seven," Spike says, trying to sound diplomatic. "You could talk to him then."

"I suppose I could," Mom says. "But you should tell me about him too, beforehand. What's he like?" She wipes her hands on the front of her jeans, and for a minute Spike almost feels like it's a normal date in a normal situation. 

 _Well, he constantly gets in trouble for cutting class and running away from home. Plus, Liz hates him._ "He's really nice, and he's in a band. I talked to him when I was trying to decide whether or not to give Emma up for adoption, because he was adopted."

"Is he the boy whose parents died last fall?"

Spike sighs. "Yes, Mom, that's him." Poor Wheels. It's an ugly title, but at least he's not a "delinquent" this time.

The phone rings. "I'll get it!" Spike runs up to the hallway in front of her room. On that phone, she'll have a little privacy.

"Hello, my name is Ben and I'd like to interest you in a one-year subscription to—"

She slams the phone down. "Telemarketer."

"Christine, it's only five-thirty!"

Between homework, feeding Emma, dinner, changing Emma, cleaning, and bathing Emma, seven o' clock comes quickly enough. She's sitting downstairs watching TV when he calls. If she were in a worse mood, she could note that it's actually eight past, not seven on the dot, but she doesn't care.

She sprints up the stairs. "Nelson residence.”

"Hi, can I speak to Christine?"

She laughs. "Who are you, a teacher?"

On the other end of the line, Wheels laughs nervously. "Hi. I talked to my grandma and she wasn't really happy about you bringing the baby along, but I told her that your mom really needs you to take care of your sister."

Spike’s breath catches in her throat. "Sister?"

"Yeah, you know how it is with grandparents," says Wheels. "They love little brothers and sisters, and I told them how responsible you are taking care of her all the time."

She's glad Wheels can't see the look of shock on her face. "I don't want to go out with someone who's ashamed of me." She slams the phone down.

"What was all that about?" Mom calls.

She can’t put everything into words. Only the words on the surface make their way out. "He told them Emma was my sister." She doesn't even try to hide her scowl. "How could he lie about me like that?”

The phone rings again.

"You should get that," says Mom.

"He can go jump in a lake."

Mom picks up the kitchen phone. "Hello? No, I'm sorry. She can't talk right now. …Yes, I know. I'll tell her." She hangs up and comes down the stairs. "That was Derek. He told me to let you know that he'll call back from a pay phone. Something about his house being really loud."

"It didn't sound loud to me," she mumbles.

"Regardless, you need to take the next call."

Sure enough, he calls back within five minutes. Spike answers. "Hello?"

"Spike! Okay, good."

"Why are you calling me?" she says with venom in her voice.

"My grandma was listening in when I called from home. I told her you needed to bring Emma because of your mom and the old bag went off about 'single mothers ruining our society' and all that crap. I had to say she was your sister or she wouldn't have let you come." He sounds apologetic, at least. Not that it counts for anything.

"Then I guess we can't go out." So it's true. He really will say anything. Her heart drops.

"It'll be easy to fool her."

"I don't want to have to fool her," she sighs. "I'm not ashamed to have Emma. What if we really like each other and start going steady? She'll have to know some time."

"Well, we'll worry about that when it gets there," he says.

"No, Wheels." She sighs. Him and his typical poor planning.

"Did you tell your mom I ran away from home?"

"It's not the same." She's getting exasperated now.

"Why not?"

Is he really this thick? "Because it’s not my fault I got pregnant! You made your own bad choices!"

There's silence on the end of the line. Then, a click.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liz's disdain for Joey stems, of course, from 2x03 "Great Expectations." Don't worry, it'll come back up later. "Shane holding Emma at Christmastime" is a reference to 3x04 "Season's Greetings."
> 
> Hope you enjoy! :)


	3. Chapter 3

_It's frigid here in the schoolyard. Icicles drip from the tetherball pole. Snow crunches softly under his feet. A slightly warm breeze blows across his face and makes him squint. When he opens them, she's there. The sun glints off of her tall, tall hair, casting her in a soft glow._

_"Spike, I'm sorry I hung up on you," he says. He's embarrassed, but looking into her warm brown eyes, he feels reassured._

_"Shh, Derek," she whispers, and presses a finger to his lips. "It's okay."_

_He smiles. "It's cold, eh?" She smiles back, and he wraps an arm around her waist. He pulls her close—_

His alarm goes off. With a groan, Wheels rolls over and shoves a pillow over his head. Great.

As he shuts the alarm off, he considers skipping school again. It wouldn't be hard. Grandma would never suspect a thing. But he realizes he wants to talk to Snake and Joey about last night. Maybe they'll know what went wrong. So he stumbles into the shower, brushes his teeth, and tries to get on with his morning. He wonders if he should get dressed up more nicely than normal. Would Spike notice? He doubts it. Still, he probably shouldn't go with his first choice of shirt, a plain blue button-down with a mysterious mustard stain. He swaps it for a white one and pairs it with dark jeans. Deodorant? Definitely.

He grabs a candy bar as he runs toward the door. "Bye-Grandma-I'm-leaving-now," he calls from the porch.

"You are going to school, aren't you?" Grandma asks.

"Of course," he says as he leaves, and slams the door behind him. Telling the truth for once. It almost feels weird.

He's never been in such a rush to get to school. Joey and Snake show up a good ten minutes after him, meeting him in the hallway. "So?" Joey's grinning like crazy. "What'd she say?"

He coughs. "Well, it's funny. I asked her over to my place, right?"

"Whoa, Wheels, my man!" says Joey. He holds his hand up for a high five.

He ignores Joey's hand. "Not like that. She can't bring the baby out to the movies, so I figured she might want to bring her along if we watched a movie at home."

"Wait, you asked her to bring the baby to a _date?_ " asks Snake.

"I didn't ask her to, she had to bring her.” Like he’d want a baby chaperoning them if he could avoid it. “But anyway, the old lady was badmouthing single moms so I told her the baby was Spike's sister. And I was trying to clue Spike in so she wouldn't say anything, and she got all mad and saying I was ashamed of her, and yeah, I ended up hanging up on her." The last words are barely more than a mumble.

"You—" Snake laughs humorlessly. "Let me get this straight. First, you asked her on a date while Shane—her kid's dad—is in a coma." Snake stoops down a bit to stare Wheels straight in the eyes.

"You're the one who told me I should!"

"I said you should do something nice for her! Joey's the one who was all, 'She's hot for you! Go ahead and get with her!'"

"Well, she is," Joey adds.

"I'm not going to get with her!"

"—second," Snake continues, "you lied about her to your grandmother, and third, you hung up on her! Gee, Wheels, I don't know why it didn't work out."

"Yeah, why did you hang up on her?" asks Joey.

"She was ragging on me for running away," he says. It’s not the whole truth, but who wants to keep arguing about it?

"Well, it was pretty dumb," says Joey, giving him half a shrug. _When Joey says something’s dumb, you know it’s really dumb,_ Wheels thinks.

"It doesn't matter," Wheels says. "I don't know how I'm gonna fix this."

"Well, do you really like her or do you just kind of like her?" Snake asks.

He doesn’t know where the line between “really like” and “kind of like” is, but the fact that Spike hasn’t left his head since Tuesday places her definitively on one side of the line. It was like a bolt of lightning, although he can’t say exactly when he got shocked. Maybe the kiss itself, maybe before. Either way, there’s no way in hell he’s talking to Snake and Joey about all this gooey stuff, so he only says, “I really like her,” in the most nonchalant tone he can muster.

Joey considers it for a second. “She’s pretty hot. I mean, considering she had a baby.”

Snake gives him a withering look. “Thanks for your commentary.”

“What? I’m just saying, I didn’t know Wheels’ type was sexy porcupines.”

Wheels bursts out laughing despite himself. “Shut up, Joey,” he finally manages.

Snake can’t hide his smile, but he tries. "It doesn't matter what type you have. You screwed up and you need to apologize."

 _Way to kill a good mood, Snake._ "It wasn't my fault," Wheels says, crossing his arms over his chest. "If my grandma hadn't gone on her dumb little rant, I wouldn't have had to lie."

"So what? You still lied."

"Not to her."

"About her," says Joey.

"It wasn't personal," says Wheels. "She shouldn't have taken it so hard."

"Well, if you want to go out with her, you have to learn to deal with stuff like that. Just talk to her about it. It's not hard." Snake turns to Joey. "Hey, did you catch the rerun of _Revenge of the Reptiles_ last night?"

"Yeah, did you see that bit where the lizard bit the dude's head off and he bled green blood?" He laughs. "Man, it was killer!"

Wheels looks around, half-participating with a laugh here or there. Where's Spike? She's usually here by now.

"Wheels?"

"Yeah?" he replies, not looking at Joey.

"What was your favorite part?"

He owns the tape, but he hasn't sat down to watch it in probably a few months. "I don't know." He's still looking down the hall.

Joey snickers. "Ooh, Wheels has got it bad…"

"You're just jealous 'cuz no girl would touch you with a ten-foot pole," says Snake.

"I'll have you know I kissed one Miss Stephanie Kaye," Joey says, tugging at his vest like he's snapping imaginary suspenders.

" _Everyone_ kissed Stephanie Kaye." Snake rolls his eyes. "Even Wheels." Wheels barely notices.

"You didn't."

"That's 'cuz I was running against her!"

Their argument is quickly turning sour when Wheels notices Spike walking down the hall by herself. Liz must be sick. He's trying to decide the best way to approach her. What is he going to say? _Spike, we need to talk._ No, too forceful. _Hey, can I have a minute?_ No, that makes him sound less serious. Maybe he should lead with the apology...?

"Hey, Spike!" Joey yells down the hall. "Wheels is looking for you!" Spike looks up.

"Joey!" Wheels glares at him.

Joey pats him on the back. "You're welcome, buddy. Let's leave 'em alone, Snake." The two laugh to themselves and shuffle off.

"What do you want?" Spike asks with narrowed eyes.

Wheels gestures for her to follow him out of the main part of the hallway, off to the relative seclusion of the side. "I'm sorry for hanging up on you," he mumbles. "I didn't want to say something I'd regret."

"I don't care about that," she says with a heavy sigh. "And I shouldn’t have said that about you and your bad choices.”

He’d almost forgotten about that. Almost. “It’s okay,” he says, not knowing if it’s exactly true. It's true she hit a sore spot. Sure, he hitchhiked. Sure, he put himself in danger. But he looks like a Boy Scout next to Shane. He's never gotten anyone pregnant; he's never done drugs. He's never abandoned a kid. 

“I shouldn't have gotten upset.” Her face is softer now. “I just don't want you lying about Emma. Or about me."

"Why not?"

"I told you, I'm not ashamed of having Emma. I know I didn't choose to get pregnant, but I still chose to keep her. I'm not going to lie to change what people think of me. I know people think I'm… easy, you know?" She slumps a little.

"Who thinks you're easy?" Wheels asks. He knows consciously that he "should" think she's easy—not that it's right—but he can't see her as anyone besides Spike Nelson, friend or classmate or crush or whatever else she is now.

She stares at him for a second before a small smile spreads over her face. She laughs lightly. "Your grandmother, apparently. Or she will, once she knows."

"Who cares about her? I just want her to let us go out. I mean, you didn't tell your mom I ran off, right? Do you think she'd let us go out if she knew that?"

"No, but I didn't lie," she says. "It's not like she asked, 'Christine, has this date of yours ever run away from home?' and I said no. I just didn't tell her. You told your grandmother that Emma wasn't my daughter. That's a lie."

He doesn't quite get the distinction, but he lets it slide. "I didn't mean anything by it."

"I know," she says, "but it still hurt."

"I'm not embarrassed to go out with you, if that's what you're worried about." He offers her a sheepish smile. "I wouldn't have asked you out if I was embarrassed."

"I hope we can still go out," she says. "My mother said Friday night is okay—if your grandmother lets us, I mean."

"That's great!"

Kids are starting to pour into the hallway. "I should get going," Spike says. "Talk to your grandmother, okay?"

"Okay."

He watches her walk away and can't help wondering what Grandma's going to say.

* * *

"I'm home!" he yells as he slams the door. The house is dark and smells like mildew and bleach, like normal. Gross.

"Derek!" Grandma whispers sharply. "Your grandfather is asleep."

"Oh, sorry." He sets his backpack down gently. Better make himself look good now.

"How was school?" she asks. 

"Fine, I guess. Got some math homework." Off with the jacket and the shoes. He leaves them where they fall.

Grandma's giving him a funny smile. "How are things with that girl from the hospital? Kirsty?" She's normal when she doesn't know. For a second, he considers trying to keep it all a secret, but then Grandma would say something or Spike would say something and not only would Grandma find out the truth, Spike would figure out he didn't tell her. If things are going to get ugly, they might as well get ugly here and now.

"Christine," he says. "Uh, things are good. Her mom said she can come over Friday. Her schedule's tight because of the baby, you know."

Grandma beams at him. "It's so nice that she's taking such responsibility."

 _Here we go._ "Of course she is. She's a good mom."

It takes a second for it to register. He can tell when it hits because she starts gaping. "Derek!"

"What?" Maybe if he doesn’t make a big deal out of it, she’ll let it slide.

Nope, that'd be too easy. "I will not have you bringing a girl of loose morals into my house!"

"I'm not," he can't help but reply. "I only invited Christine."

She narrows her eyes. "You think you're so clever, don't you? You lied to me, again—and for what? So you could bring a girl like that home? My answer is no!"

He scoffs. "You're not my mother."

Grandma holds her stare. "Do you think your mother would want you bringing her around?"

"It doesn't matter what she'd want. She's dead." Wheels stares back.

"Well, she would want what's best for you. And so do I." She puts a hand on his shoulder. Her voice is almost gentle now. "You're too young to be a father."

Because he's so completely idiotic that he'd get her into trouble  _again,_ and Spike's so dumb or so slutty that she'd let him. "What, you think I'm gonna knock her up too?" He shrugs her hand off.

"Don't be vulgar with me, young man."

"How stupid do you think I am? Do you really think I'd bring her _and her kid_ home to my grandparents if I was going to have sex with her?" Idiotic, careless, impulsive, and now completely defiant— good to know what Grandma really thinks of him. Looking at her pretending to care makes him want to spit.

"I was young once, too," she says. Whatever that means.

He rolls his eyes and starts pulling his shoes back on.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"What for?"

"I have to make a call."

"You can call from the house phone," Grandma says coolly. 

He glares at her. "Fine."

Spike's phone number hasn't completely washed off yet—what was she thinking writing it in sparkly pink ink?—but even if it had, it's burned into his mind. She picks up herself. "Nelson residence."

He doesn't bother with a greeting. "My grandma says you can't come over Friday. Or ever."

"Because of the baby?" She sounds like she was expecting this.

"Yeah, she's worried about us acting up at a supervised date with Emma there, so I guess I'd better take you out somewhere all dark and isolated. You know. The movie theater, maybe, or the park at night." He raises his voice just enough for Grandma to hear.

She chuckles. "Thanks for telling her, anyway."

"Yeah, aren't you glad she's judging you without ever meeting you?"

Grandma sighs behind him. "Derek, wait."

"Hang on, she's talking to me," he says into the phone, and lowers the receiver. He turns and looks at Grandma without words.

"I suppose I'm too old to stop you," she says, "so you might as well bring her where I can keep an eye on her." Her voice is resigned. "I want her home by ten."

Wheels looks at her and nods slowly. He picks the phone back up. "Actually, Grandma changed her mind. She just wants you home by ten. Is that all right?"

"Sure!" He hears her smiling over the phone. "Emma has to be home early anyway. I'll bring her carrier so she can sleep. Are you going to pick me up?"

"Yeah, we can take a streetcar. I'll pay. How long will it take you to get dressed and stuff?"

"I'll make it quick. Maybe half an hour?"

That sounds unrealistic to him, what with all the hairspray she has to be using, but he doesn’t question it. "All right, then I'll come by and get you at five. How's that?"

"Sounds good to me. See you then?"

"See you."

He hangs up the phone. All he can see is Grandma's look of disappointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wheels' overwrought dream sequence was inspired by Spike's daydream about Snake in 5x11 "Three's a Crowd." _Revenge of the Reptiles_ (geez, what a title) is the movie that everyone goes to see in 2x04 "Dinner and a Show." And, of course, "Everybody kissed Stephanie Kaye" is a reference to 1x01 "Kiss Me, Steph." :)


	4. Chapter 4

Thursday goes by in a blur. Liz comes back, complaining about yesterday's dentist appointment but otherwise pretty blasé. Math, English, chemistry— everything's the same. A small part of her expected things to be different. _Well, why would it be? Nothing changed when you went out with Shane._

Shane. It's too bad their relationship had to be colored by the baby. They had fun times. She remembers their first date, skating at the roller rink. It was a hot, sticky day in August, the last week before school started. Looking back, she can't believe they went so fast. Everything happened so fast, really. It's less than two years since they started going out, and now it's almost Emma's birthday. And she's already going on a date with a new guy.

The thought of Shane rattles around inside her head even as she's waiting for Thursday to be over with. Emma gives her a whimper and her annoyed frown looks like Shane's look of concentration. Her dusting of peach fuzz is the same color as his fluffy hair. She tries to shove the thoughts away as Thursday blurs into Friday.

Friday comes. She keeps stealing glances across homeroom at Wheels as the clock ticks forward at snail speed. _What's it going to be like? Will the baby be good? What will his grandparents be like?_

 _You didn't meet Mr. and Mrs. McKay until after you were pregnant,_ she thinks.

She looks down at her homework planner to distract herself. Math— she can knock that out in lunch. English— only one chapter? That'll be quick for Saturday. No matter what she tries to think about, her eyes drift back to Wheels and her mind goes elsewhere. Well, there's no point in milling over it now. She'll talk about it with Liz. Maybe.

As she walks toward first period, Erica and Heather approach her in the hallway with big grins. "We heard you were going out with Wheels," says Erica.

"We're not going out, we're staying in." She laughs.

Heather sighs dramatically. "He's _so_ cute. I bet you're gonna have a great time."

"Well, I'll let you know." She smiles as she walks to class.

News travels fast at Degrassi Junior High, especially when Heather and Erica are involved. By lunch, five people ask about her plans with Wheels, including LD, Nancy, and, inexplicably, Tim. _I hope this date lives up to the hype,_ Spike thinks.

Four o' clock hits, the bell rings out, and Spike practically flies home. Emma had an early nap, so she's awake and ready to eat as soon as she can. Mom is only home for a few minutes to hand the baby off before she has to go back to work. Spike, meanwhile, wonders what to wear.

She stands in front of her closet. A large cardboard box sits off to the side, filled with maternity clothes and clothes she ruined by stretching them out. With those in the yard sale pile, her closet looks sparse. _What will make a good impression on his grandparents? What can I get Emma drool on?_ She ends up pulling out a red plaid skirt—she bought it in her first trimester, so it should be fine with a belt—and a white machine-washable blouse. Nice and simple. And some combat boots, just to show Wheels who's boss. She freshens up her school hairstyle with another layer of hairspray and touches up her makeup. Wheels won't notice, but it makes her feel better to go to a date dressed up.

She's got a little extra time at this point, so she decides to have a little fun by putting Emma in one of her cute baby dresses. It's powder pink and comes with an adorable matching bonnet. After that, she has to pack the diaper bag. Diapers. Bottles. Extra outfit. Jars of food. Blankets. Toys. Teething rings. Piles and piles of this stuff.

She's on edge until she finally hears the doorbell ring. There he is. Wheels stands in the doorway in a cozy-looking sweater and jeans, smelling overwhelmingly like cheap aftershave and holding out a small bouquet of flowers _(flowers!)_. "Hi." He smiles awkwardly.

"Hi." She takes the flowers. "Come in. I'll put these in a vase."

"We have to catch the streetcar in ten minutes," he says, checking his watch.

"It'll be quick, don't worry."

He glances around. "Where's your mom?"

"Had to go back to work. That's why we have to bring Emma, remember?"

"Oh, right. Where is she, anyway?"

"In her carrier, in the living room. Hang on." She can't find a vase to put the flowers in, so she rinses out an old wine bottle and fills it with water instead. It's glass, it's vase-shaped— it'll be fine. "I left the flowers on the kitchen table." She pulls the massive diaper bag strap onto her shoulder, lifts Emma's carrier, and staggers back into the hallway. "Okay, we can go."

Wheels laughs. "You're leaning over. I'll get something."

"It's okay, really. You get used to it."

It's late spring; the sun is still bright and warm as they wait for the streetcar. "I forgot to say thank you for the flowers." _Shane never brought you flowers,_ says a nasty little thought, but she shoos it away.

"No problem." He stands apart from her, looking uncertain of what to do. "Are you sure I can't hold something?"

"Sure." She takes the diaper bag off her aching shoulder and hands it to him. "Thanks."

"Oomph," he says, lifting the bag. "How do you carry this thing?"

"Trust me, it's lighter than Emma. Isn't that right?" Emma squeals in response.

The streetcar comes, and even though it's crowded, Wheels keeps his distance. "You know," Spike says after a minute, "you could stand closer."

"I don't know if I can," he replies. "I might get poked."

She laughs and scoots a little closer as they wait for his stop.

"Uh, I forgot to ask what you wanted to watch," he says. "We have a few tapes, but if you want to watch something else, there's a rental place a few blocks down."

"I'm sure we'll find something," she says. "But it can't be too loud. I'm hoping Emma will sleep."

"My grandpa will probably be sleeping too. He's, uh, not all there anymore. Just so you know."

"What's wrong with him?"

"A stroke, I think."

That casts a hush on the rest of the ride. What is there to say? She stands close to him, partly in case of sharp turns and partly because she can. Thankfully it's short and his house isn't a long walk away. “Oh, by the way, sorry. I forgot to tell you not to eat before you came," Wheels says. "Grandma made dinner."

In her nervous preparations, she didn't eat anyway. "That's fine. Is it okay if I feed Emma at the same time?"

"It should be." Wheels lets himself in. "We're back!" he yells.

"Derek, please." His annoyed grandmother pops into view. Spike recognizes her from the funeral, though they didn't say anything to each other then. At least she looks more cheerful tonight. Slightly. "Oh, _you're_ Christine."

She puts Emma's carrier down and holds her hand out. "Spike."

"Yes, I can see that." She is not subtle in looking her up and down.

Wheels sets the diaper bag down with a clatter. "Oh, uh— Grandma, this is Christine Nelson. Spike, this is my grandma."

"It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler," Spike says, trying to sound friendly.

"Phillips," she corrects without a handshake. Must be his mom's mom, then. "Dinner's almost ready." She walks back into the kitchen.

Wheels coughs. "Uh, I guess we can pick out a tape while we're waiting."

Spike crouches down and lets Emma out of her carrier. "She didn't say anything about the baby."

"She's hoping that if she doesn't say anything, she'll go away," he mumbles.

There's not a lot of movies to choose from, but eventually they decide on the supposed funniest comedy of 1972, "Not Without My Horse!" The exclamation point is part of the title. Emma, meanwhile, is more interested in chewing on the plastic box the tape came in. "Well, we know someone likes it, at least," Wheels says.

His grandfather is in the living room, too, watching professional wrestling. He doesn't seem to notice that they're there, just sits in his wheelchair watching TV. Spike doesn't know what to say. _What if that's how Shane ends up?_ she can't help but wonder. _Unaware. "Not all there anymore."_ She doesn't even realize she's staring until Wheels shakes her by the shoulder and shame floods her face.

Dinner is ready pretty quickly. Roast beef and mashed potatoes. It smells amazing. Sitting down to eat is a different story. She sits across from Mrs. Phillips, who won't stop glaring at her. Begrudgingly, she got a stack of phone books for Emma to sit on while she eats her mashed potatoes, but otherwise she won't acknowledge her at all.

"This is really good," Spike says. As she eats, she hears her mother chiding her. _Napkin in your lap, Christine. Elbows off the table._ She'll have a hard enough time making a good impression without adding bad manners into the mix.

She ignores her. "So, Christine," she asks, "are you still in school?"

"Grade nine graduation is in a few weeks," she replies.

"She's in my class, Grandma," Wheels adds.

"Well, it must be tough going to school the way you are."

 _Oh, so this is how it's going to be,_ Spike thinks. "It was harder when they made me leave school," she replies coolly. "Since the PTA let me come back, I've been doing well."

"Really? What's your best subject?"

"English and art."

"What do you plan to do with that?" She's worn the same look of barely hidden contempt all evening.

"I'm not sure yet."

"Well, it's nice to know you've got a plan for your future."

Spike stabs her roast beef.

"How do you plan on supporting that baby of yours?"

"What is this, an interrogation?" Wheels asks loudly. He keeps shifting his eyes between Spike and his grandmother, tracking the tone of the conversation.

"It's okay. I'm used to it." She redirects her stare. "I'm looking for an after-school job, actually. I used to get child support from her father, but he's in the hospital right now."

"Really." It's not a question.

"Grandma, I told you, that's why she was there the other day." Wheels is hacking away at his roast beef.

She smiles cloyingly. "How nice, you're attached to him still."

"Grandma!" Wheels yells. He slams his fist on the table.

Minutes go by painfully slowly. Mrs. Phillips asks everything from "do you have time for extracurriculars at all?" to "is your mother _really_ a hairdresser?" Wheels is getting visibly annoyed. _She's an old woman. Don't insult her,_ Spike thinks as she tries to find the middle ground between polite and firm.

Emma attempts to spoon mashed potatoes into her mouth. They fall everywhere like little snowdrifts. On her dress, on the table, on the floor. Spike sees an out. "Where are the paper towels?"

"In the kitchen." Wheels gets up.

"It's okay, I'll get it." She pushes her chair in and walks away, trying to calm herself with steady breathing.

She grabs the paper towels and as she's walking back, she hears Wheels and his grandmother talking quietly.

"...You need to leave her alone. She didn't even do anything."

"That baby made a mess all over my nice clean floor."

"She's a baby! What do you expect?"

"Your mother was never like that and neither were you. I've always said it's down to the mother."

She moves to the doorway and clears her throat. Mrs. Phillips looks like a deer in headlights. Spike bends down and cleans up after Emma. It isn't even that big of a mess. Emma’s just a baby.

"Let me help." Wheels is standing up.

"Hold Emma." Emma squeals as he picks her up. "I'll get my things."

"Spike, wait!" But she ignores him as she packs to leave. She grabs Emma out of his arms a bit too roughly. Emma screeches and reaches her arms out toward him, even as Spike is strapping her back into the carrier. She yanks the diaper bag up and stomps out of the house.

She's halfway down the sidewalk when she hears Wheels yelling from the porch. "Spike!" He runs down to meet her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not staying where I'm not wanted," she says, staring at the ground. "I— I know I made a mistake. I'm paying for it every single day. But it's not like sniping at me about it will make it better."

"I didn't do anything," Wheels says.

"I know, but I can't stay if your grandmother is going to be so nasty. I want to be with people who like me."

"I like you."

The disappointment crushes her chest. "If you like me, then why can't you get her to stop?"

"She's an old cow. What do you expect?" Even under the fading light, the annoyance in his face is easy to see.

Is he serious? "I expect that if I mean anything to you, besides a sleaze or a— a _pity date_ — then Emma and I deserve basic respect!"

"Pity date?"

"Yeah, 'poor Spike, she needs another boy to leech off of now that her old one's dying!'" She's yelling now and she doesn't care. Let the neighbors know about Wheels' tricks and his grandmother's insults. Emma hates the noise. She'll sleep later. At home.

"It's not a pity date!" he yells, flustered.

"Prove it!"

Wheels gives her a look of defiance. What does he want to say? _It was a pity date all along, Spike, and you fell for it._ Or maybe, _What are you thinking going on a date at all?_ She glares up at him, with a face that says "Try me." Her neck is getting hot, even in the cool breezy evening. She grips the handle of Emma's carrier in one hand and digs her fingernails into her other palm. "Well?"

He interrupts her with a kiss—a distinctly unpracticed, somewhat sloppy, and aggressively enthusiastic first kiss. Nothing pitiful about it. Her hot blush spreads up her face as she unclenches her fist. It's like a cold shower on a hot summer day: the annoyance and tension fades away. Her mind is racing with questions she can't put into words. But, at least, she doesn't have to. Not right now. She pulls him closer with her free arm, and for a few seconds there's no hospital, no grandmothers, no weird hang-ups or other people's opinions to worry about. In the dim evening light, it's just the two of them.

Emma makes a gurgling noise. Right. Spike breaks the kiss and steps back, grinning even as she glances down to check on her.

Wheels gives her an awkward smile. "See? No pity here."

She laughs. "You got mashed potato on my shirt."

He looks down. Dinner with the baby left a big smear of mashed potatoes across his sweater. "Me? You're the one who got all huggy," he replies with a laugh. They stand for a second as Spike's blush fades, before Wheels says, "Come back inside. Please?”

Spike's not about to let a kiss distract her. "You'll keep your grandmother off my back?"

"I’ll give it a shot.”

She nods decisively. “All right. Besides," she says as they walk back up the sidewalk, "I have to know what that movie's about."

Inside, Mrs. Phillips is starting to clear the table. Her glare could burn a hole through sheet rock, but all she says is, "Oh, you're back."

"She needed some air," Wheels says. He peels off the mashed-potato-covered sweater, leaving him in a plain t-shirt.

Spike goes over to the table and takes the plates. "Excuse you, I don't need your help," Mrs. Phillips snaps.

"I want to help. I'm a guest here."

"That's right, you are." She picks up the empty serving bowls. "Where's that baby of yours?"

Spike gestures to the carrier sitting next to the discarded diaper bag. "She has a name."

Mrs. Phillips nods silently.

"It's Emma."

"I see."

 _Polite but firm,_ Spike reminds herself. "She didn't choose to be born, you know. You don't have to be rude.”

Her eyes darken. "I've been perfectly accommodating of your condition all evening, young lady."

"My condition?” Spike repeats. “I don't have a disease. Just because I'm a mother doesn't mean I'm not a person too.” Why doesn't she know that?

Mrs. Phillips stares at her for a minute, unreadable. "Derek, why don't you put that movie on. Your grandfather's gone to bed."

Wheels gives Spike an apologetic glance. "Sure, Grandma."

She follows him reluctantly into the living room, lugging Emma's increasingly heavy carrier along. Emma is starting to doze off finally.

As expected, "Not Without My Horse!" is pretty terrible. Some kind of historical romantic comedy. She can't follow it at all. At least it's quiet enough for Emma to sleep through, unlike Wheels' other suggestion, "The Beast From Planet Five."

"Why is that guy dressed up as a horse?" Spike asks as she curls up on the couch.

"He's not. He's supposed to be the actual horse."

"Really? They couldn't rent a real one?"

Even the movie's profound lameness doesn't hold her attention for long. After smashing down on the side of her hairdo, she cuddles up against Wheels, who seems surprisingly engaged in the plot. Spike, meanwhile, keeps replaying the brief kiss in her head. Even the dumbest details stick out in her mind. The hero of the movie is busy proclaiming his profound love for the lady of the manor and all she can think of is the warmth of the kiss in the cool night. Of his glasses gently bumping into her face. Of pulling close to him and feeling his soft sweater under her free hand. She sits and thinks while the movie keeps playing.

Half an hour in, Mrs. Phillips comes in to sit in the armchair and supervise, so Spike has to scoot to the edge of the couch. They hold hands.

Emma starts to stir near the end of the movie. She stretches out and starts to whimper. “I think somebody needs to go to bed,” Spike says quietly. “I’d better go.”

“All right.” He stands up and says loudly, “I’m taking her home, Grandma.”

“I have ears.” She doesn’t stand up. All she says to her is, “Goodbye.”

As they hop on the streetcar home, Spike asks, “How does the movie end?”

“Oh, uh, what’s-his-name and the girl get married, and the other guy gets arrested. I forget what happens to everybody else.”

She laughs. “Specific.”

He shrugs. “Were you actually interested in the movie?”

“Not really.” She smiles. Wheels holds onto the strap— Spike has one arm around him and one arm on Emma’s carrier. She says she can't reach the strap, which is true, but not the whole truth.

"At least the old woman stopped harassing us," Wheels says.

"I guess," Spike replies. The streetcar is calm and nearly empty at this time of night. "I hope she'll be nicer the next time we go out."

"You want to go out again?"

"Don't you?"

"Yeah, of course," he says. "But I hope you can get a babysitter next time."

"I'll see if Liz is up for it. Maybe we can go to the graduation dance together."

"I hope so."

The ride is quiet, but not awkwardly quiet. Just peaceful.

He walks her up, but won't come in to meet Mom. "Maybe next time," she says.

As he kisses her good night, one question won't leave Spike's mind: _What now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things:
> 
> 1\. I checked against the Degrassi Wiki, and as far as I know, Wheels' grandmother doesn't have a canon last name because she's explicitly stated to be his mother's mother (in 3x02 "Can't Live Without 'Em, Part 2"). I used her actress's surname (thanks, IMDb), but if the wiki's wrong, let me know!
> 
> 2\. _Not Without My Horse!_ isn't a real movie, nor is _The Beast From Planet Five._ I was trying to follow in the footsteps of such cinematic masterpieces as _Revenge of the Reptiles_ and _Crying in the Wind._
> 
> 3\. Wasn't sure if Wheels bringing flowers for the date would come off as OOC or not, but he did bring some for the "date" with Steph in 1x07 "Best Laid Plans," so I figured it wasn't unreasonable. 
> 
> Also, and this is just a general thing, but I'm very American and wasn't born when the 80s ended. I've tried to proof out Americanisms and anachronisms, but if you see any that I missed, please tell me! 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been reading, especially everyone who left comments and kudos (all two of you)! I hope you guys are warming up to this story. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update as of 9/13: Chapter 6 is taking a lot more editing than I anticipated, so I won't be able to update for Friday (9/16). However, I did post a one-shot about the Zit Remedy called "Brotherly Love," so if my delay is really disheartening, feel free to check that out. :)

Unlike his predictions, Wheels does not wake up to a war zone on Saturday morning. He rolls out of bed bright and early at eleven and wanders downstairs. Grandma and Grandpa are in the kitchen. “Good morning,” Grandma says. No potshots about him sleeping in, no nagging. Weird.

He hesitates. “Hi." He grabs a box of cereal off the top of the fridge.

“Use a bowl, please.” She says it neutrally. “Do you have any big plans for today?”

Why does she care? “Just hanging with Joey and Snake.”

She smiles tightly. “That’s nice. Archie’s a nice boy.”

He glances over at Grandpa, who’s sitting at the table eating lunch. Nothing weird there. “So I can go out?”

“Why wouldn’t I let you?”

Wheels half-expects someone to burst out from behind the counter. _Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!_ “I thought you were mad about yesterday.”

That catches her off-guard. “No, I'm not angry with _you,_ " she says carefully. "You were well-behaved. I was surprised.”

He looks at her suspiciously. “I was on a date. Of course I was well-behaved.”

She looks down her nose at him. “If only everyone could be like that.”

Great. Not another fight, not now, not with _this woman_ who thinks the only mistake she's ever made was her grandson. “Yeah, if only,” he says pointedly, before pulling his shoes on and walking out.

* * *

Like he guessed, Joey and Snake pounce on him when he shows up to the burger joint. "So, how'd it go?" Joey asks. "We've been dying to know."

"'The night is young, the sun is setting, and Spike _falls_ into Wheels' arms.'" Snake sighs and presses the back of his hand to his forehead. "How romantic."

"It was a date, guys." He slides in the booth next to Snake and takes a handful of fries. _Well, she did kind of fall into my arms,_ he thinks to himself with a smile.

"Joey doesn't know what that's like," says Snake.

Joey laughs sarcastically. "C'mon, I just wanna know what went down. Anything juicy happen? How far'd you go?"

Somehow, Wheels finds it in himself not to call him an idiot. "Joey, you need to get a life."

"What, me? I have a life! Mild-mannered student by day, rock star by night." He pans his hand horizontally like he's looking at a nonexistent Zit Remedy billboard.

"We can't be rock stars 'cuz Wheels sold his bass," says Snake.

"Joey could be a solo act," Wheels replies.

"Who ever heard of a solo keyboarder?" Joey asks. He leans back against the stained vinyl of the booth— for a second, Wheels worries that he’ll put his feet up on the table.

"Keyboardist."

"Whatever. The point is, we need a bassist if we're ever gonna make it big!" Joey reaches over to steal some of Snake’s fries and gets his hand slapped.

"We never even had a drummer," Wheels says. _Mostly because you refused to be at the back of the stage._

"We don't need a drummer. We've got sheer, raw talent." He slams his palms on the table as if he actually made a decent point.

Snake snorts. "Right. What we need is a new song."

"Hey, maybe Wheels could write us something mellow. A love song," Joey says, making his voice mushy.

He shoves down some fries. "Yeah, 'cuz if there's one thing record execs love, it's a grade nine romance."

"Ooh, _romance._ " Snake snickers.

"Oh, yeah, so romantic." He rolls his eyes. "My grandma was a cow, the baby got food all over me, and the movie sucked."

Unlike Joey, Snake's curiosity doesn't come across as creepy or desperate. "So you're not going out again?" he asks.

"Yeah, we are. Just without the baby next time." He laughs. If she wants to go out again after that disaster, things have got to be good.

"I still can't believe she actually brought her." Snake shakes his head. "I guess that put a damper on things, huh?"

Joey tries to pose as some kind of dating expert, saying in a cocky voice, "Better get used to that. Why do you think Shane dumped her?"

Snake goes quiet. "Joey," Wheels says, his voice low but firm.

"What? It's true."

Actually, it’s not true, because by all accounts it was a mutual breakup, but Wheels only says, "I don't want to talk about her and Shane."

"Why not?" asks Snake.

"Why _not?"_ Wheels repeats. Joey and Snake are silent.

Joey looks at him. "Aren't you gonna tell us?"

It's hard to put into everything into words. Honestly, he might not even know enough words to explain it all, the tangled mess with Shane and Emma and Grandma's worries about it all. "I don't know. I like her a lot, the baby's fine, but I don't want to talk about Shane."

"He's not just her kid's dad," Snake says between sips of pop. "He was our friend too."

"Is," Joey says.

Strange how Shane is still an _is_ at this point. Not that Wheels would ever say that to anyone. "I don't think Spike wants to talk about him either. They've been broken up for, like, a year and a half."

"Well, yeah, but it's different with him being in a coma," Snake says. "She's not talking about him as a boyfriend. It's not 'Spike and Shane,' it's 'Shane in a coma.'"

"I know." Even after everything, he still never really knew Shane. He was Snake's teammate; Joey was always trying to squeeze some gossip out of him. But Wheels didn't talk to him much, and all the secondhand stories about him and basketball and the baby won't make them friends. But he's involved now in some weird, unexplainable way, so he must owe him something, right? "I'll go see him on Tuesday."

"Why Tuesday?" Snake asks.

"Grandma's still making me see that grief counselor guy."

"I thought that was last week."

"It's more than one week, Joey."

"Well, I hope it doesn't get in the way of band practice." Joey grins. Snake throws a fry at him.

* * *

Monday. Wheels sits on the steps of the entrance and tries to look cool. He thought about wearing his mashed-potato sweater again, but decided against looking like he's either totally hung up on the date or allergic to laundry. _Even though you_ are _hung up on Spike and you_ do _hate laundry,_ he thinks.

Liz walks in alone at ten 'til nine. It's nice that she's not giving him a hateful glare this time, but she still doesn't say much to him. But that's just Liz. Spike's not there, and Liz isn't giving him an explanation, so all Wheels can do is stretch out on the steps and wait.

"I just don't get triangles," Joey's saying as he and Snake walk up minutes later.

"What about triangles?" Snake asks.

"I don't know, everything. Wheels!" Wheels looks up. "Remember the unit about triangles?"

"No.” Unfortunately, Joey's got him thinking about homework. Math kicked his ass. English kicked his ass. French—well, he didn't do French, but if he had, it would have kicked his ass too. Exams are only about a month away. Maybe a bit more. He lost his homework planner, so who knows?

Oh well. His expectations for Monday were too high. He follows Snake and Joey inside and hangs by their lockers, aloof.

"Yo, Wheels, why're you hanging with us?" Joey asks. "Shouldn't you be hanging with your _girlfriend?_ "

"She's not my girlfriend." Even as he's saying it, he knows they can hear his disappointment.

"Yet," says Snake.

"Still. It's only been one date." He shrugs. "And she's out today, I think."

"Avoiding you?" Snake asks.

"No, he gave her some weird disease," Joey says.

"Comedians, the both of you."

Class. The worst part of school. He spends half his time drumming with his pencil and the other half trying to force himself to concentrate. He needs to pay attention. His marks have been going up, but not enough. Lunch is fine (Joey is considering adding a rap verse to "Everybody Wants Something."). Everything is fine, really. But nothing's great. Friday was great. Even when it was terrible, it was great. Monday, everything's weird. He feels like he's standing on a bouncy birthday castle: everything's wobbly, and one wrong step could bring the whole thing down. She's still not there by lunch. Wheels goes home to do work and be by himself.

Tuesday's a bit more exciting. And weird. And confusing. Today, he decides, it'll be better. If she's there, great; if she's not there, he'll make the best of it. He even shaves for the occasion. His second try goes no better than Friday's first try—he's pretty sure he ripped off a layer of skin. Still, he feels more mature. After all, he's fifteen now.

He catches her at the entrance. "Hey, Spike!" Liz, to her credit, recognizes her cue to leave.

"Hi, Wheels." He barely recognizes her. Her hair is mostly down—it's got gel or something in it, but it's not "spiked"—and held by some headband thing. He can count on one hand how often he's seen her hair down. She's wearing a PE uniform shirt and plain jeans. Spike incognito.

"Should I call you Christine today?" he asks, pointing to her hair.

She smirks, but her eyes are still exhausted. "She's my alter ego. Shh, don't tell anyone."

"I missed you yesterday." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "Well, not just me, but you know."

"Sorry." She yawns. "Emma was sick. Crying all night. Lucky my mom could take off today."

He grimaces. There's a pause because, honestly, what can he say? "Uh, can I carry your books?"

"If you want. You don't have to."

"Don't worry, I want to."

He staggers a little under the weight. Thankfully, Spike doesn't notice, and anyway, it’s nice feeling like she wants him around for something. "Thanks." As they start walking, she asks, "How's the band doing?"

"We're broken up, but don't tell Joey. He's convinced we'll be on the rock charts before we graduate." He rolls his eyes. In the back of his mind, he wonders dimly where his bandmates are right about now. As it is, he walks through the hallway with blinders on.

"You'd better get going. You only have one song so far."

"We're not even a real rock band."

"You're beyond rock." Her smile lights up the hallway. "The Zit Remedy is unclassifiable—maybe postmodern post-rock?"

"Post-music."

He didn't actually expect her to laugh at his dumb joke. "What bands does he want to be like?"

"Whichever have the most groupies." He shrugs. "Joey talks a big game, but you know. I was working on this super cool bass line and he was all, 'No, gotta make it simple, or it won't be catchy.'"

"Going for that punk sound?" she asks with a gleam in her eye. "I have some tapes you can borrow if you need inspiration. Actually," she says, swinging her backpack into arm’s reach, “hang on.” She holds up a cassette. “What do you think of Nuclear Disaster?”

“What, like Chernobyl?”

She laughs. “No, like the band. Here.” She hands him the tape. “Tell me what you think.”

He’s a little afraid of a band called Nuclear Disaster, but he doesn’t let it show. “All right.” He maneuvers the books and shoves the tape into his pocket. "I don’t think we’ll change our sound up, though. All my and Snake’s suggestions have to go through Joey. Or, at least, they used to."

"Well, I hope you guys get back together soon. I'll get to say, 'I was there before they got big.'" She grins at him.

He laughs. It's nice having someone to laugh with. "Oh, right. I'm gonna go to the grocery store and see all these tabloids: 'Bassist's Girlfriend Tells All.'"

"Girlfriend?"

He freezes. She's looking at him expectantly. "Well, 'friend-who-went-on-one-date-with-the-bassist' doesn't sound as good."

"Agreed," she says, "but…"

 _Damn it._ "Yeah?"

"I thought about it all weekend, and… I don't want to rush things," she says, although she's rushing the words out. "I mean, I really like you, and if it were any other time I'd say 'of course.'" Before he can comment, she's already moved on. "But I rushed things— before, and everything's complicated now, and I'm stressing over the baby, and over— you know—" Funny enough, the little annoyed sound she makes sounds like Emma waking up. "And then _exams—"_

"You'll do fine on exams." He thinks about hugging her with his free arm. No, she'd probably think it was condescending.

"I really won't," she replies.

"You're doing better than me, and I don't even have a kid to worry about."

Spike shakes her head. A gelled piece of her hair falls forward. "I need more time to work. Maybe we can study together." It's not a question.

"Great, more school," he teases. "Sounds like a party."

"Let's just give it a try," she says, still frazzled. Her voice is tense. "Lunch today?"

"I'm not gonna be much help."

"What's your best class?"

"I don't have one."

That joke falls flat. His streak of jokes was good while it lasted. "Well, I can help with English— it'll be good review," Spike says. She's tapping her fingers against her leg.

English. His third worst subject. "Whatever you say."

"It'll be fun. I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep." Wheels means it more lightly than it sounds.

"Don't be such a killjoy," she says with an edge of annoyance in her voice. Right. The exhaustion.

"All right, all right, I'll come." He smiles to soften his ever-present sarcasm.

That doesn't work, either. She raises an eyebrow skeptically. "Lunch, okay?"

"Sure. I'll be there."

The bell rings. Spike swears under her breath and grabs her books out of Wheels' arms.

"That was the five-minute bell. We're okay."

Spike laughs tiredly. "I need coffee."

* * *

Finally, lunch. Everyone shoves out of the classroom in a herd. He might be glad to be done with geography, but still, Wheels finds it hard to share their enthusiasm for mystery meat. Making his own lunch isn't the same as having one of Mom's. And anyway, he's not about to get up earlier in the morning to put ham on bread. He buys himself a pop from the vending machine, then gets another for Spike. He'll take a box of cereal up to his room after dinner.

Besides a few immature jokes from Joey, Wheels' friends mostly leave him alone as he sits and waits. People move through the lines and wait for little plastic tubs of applesauce. He sips his pop. Finally Spike slams her tray down, then her English book, a dog-eared copy of _Animal Farm._ "Ready for English?"

"Ready as I'll be ever be." He slides the can of pop across the table. "Here."

"What's that?"

"I thought you needed a sugar boost."

She smiles. Genuinely smiles. "Aw, thanks. But you can't bribe your way out of this."

"Oh no, you caught me." He rolls his eyes.

She flips the book open, and for forty minutes he learns more boring garbage about Soviet history and British satire than he could ever be bothered to learn alone. Somehow, things start to fall into place. Spike's surprisingly patient. It's nice, not having to feel dumb. Snake always talks down to him when they work on math, like his entire worth as a person depends on knowing what a parabola is. Spike's not like that. She just takes him through her notes, piece by piece. But by the time the pigs start walking on their hind legs, Spike starts flagging.

"So because Napoleon is a symbol of Trotsky..."

"Stalin," Wheels says.

"What?"

"You said Trotsky, but that's Snowball. Napoleon is Stalin. Right?"

She blinks. "Right."

"You need a nap."

Spike yawns. "I need to eat," she replies as she looks down at her untouched tray. "I couldn't sit ten minutes last night without hearing crying. I'm starving."

"I think that's all the English I can handle, anyway," he says.

"I need to study some more." She lets out a sharp, frustrated sigh. "That kid!"

"She's just a baby. She can't help it." _Oh, no kidding, Wheels,_ he thinks, but he can't stay quiet when Spike is worked up. Even if that means saying something dumb. Like usual.

"That's the problem," Spike says, holding her head in one hand. "She needs me all the time. You can't turn around without her needing a bottle or a diaper or a nap. And then when I think everything's fine, she gets sick. Now I have to go by the drugstore, buy some baby aspirin out of my own savings, and hope she'll feel better."

In a flash, Wheels remembers Mike's fiancée trying to explain away why they didn't want him. _What kind of father do you think you'd make right now?_ she asked him. Not half as good a parent as Spike, he knows, and look where she is. Wheels coughs and tries to shove the thoughts of Mike and his new kid away.

"What if I have to drop out?" Spike continues. "Maybe I'll bus tables or something for the rest of my life. You know, sometimes I wish I gave her up!"

Her words slap him in the face. Wheels glares at her. _Don't forget,_ he thinks, _I helped you out there._ But things were different then, back when being adopted didn't hurt and he had two sets of parents, not none. He doesn't say anything. He waits to see what she'll do.

She goes pale. "I didn't mean that."

He ignores that. There's nothing he can add. "Emma needs you, don’t forget," he says.

"She needs her dad, too." Spike looks so small. Sometimes he forgets they're the same age. She seems so much older and so much younger at the same time.

Once again, Shane freezes a conversation. "Well, you can’t do anything about him,” he says weakly. There should be something better for him to say, but he can’t find it.

"I know." For a second, there's only the sound of people milling around, chatting about the soccer game and the movies playing this weekend. "I shouldn’t have said that, about giving her up. I wasn’t trying to imply anything."

"It's okay. It's not like you meant it at me." He shrugs it off. Or tries to.

She glances up at the clock. Lunch is almost over. "Want to study again tomorrow?"

"Sure." He takes another drink and accidentally bumps his can against his chin.

Spike must see him wince. "What's wrong?" He gestures to the bandage. "Cut yourself shaving?"

"Yeah." It sounds dumb putting it in those words.

"I've never understood why guys do that," she says, getting up. "I mean, it looks easy enough."

"Well, it's not like I had anyone to teach me."

Is that pity on her face? He definitely does not need her pity. "I'm sorry," she says, and Wheels’ mind starts screaming _No!_ Spike's always been normal to him before. It was refreshing after every random loser in grade nine came to him with some longwinded condolence message. That normalcy better not go away.

He scowls—not at her, exactly, but at her words. "Why? You didn't do anything."

"You know what I mean."

"It'll heal," he says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, and for a second even he's not sure what he's talking about.

* * *

The last bell rings and Wheels leaves school like a bat out of hell. Not that he wants to go home. His appointment isn't until five-fifteen, and Grandma's house is on the way to the hospital anyway, but today, the idea of dealing with Grandma is as appealing as dealing with a pool of sharks. He takes his sweet time walking to the hospital, but even taking the detour around Grandma's house gets him to the hospital ahead of time.

This backpack feels like it has bricks in it. He brought some textbooks home to try and make at least some sense of things on his own—not like he's going to the library or anything, but still. He signs himself in for his appointment and crashes in the waiting room. He can either read the March 1983 edition of _Tiger Beat_ magazine, or he can do the rest of his homework. It's a close call, but finally he pulls out that stupid algebra textbook. When did math get so many letters in it? At least Snake's good at explaining it. Maybe he'll end up teaching some day. Wheels sweats over seven problems in the time before his appointment. It's not getting much easier. At least it gives him some reason to not hate the appointment—it's a break from math.

Dr. Lewis isn't a shrink, exactly. Wheels expected that'd he'd have to lie down on a couch and talk about all his "dreams" and "deep-seated fears." Mostly, he wanted him to talk about his week, how life's been treating him, how he's been getting on since the fall. He's not exactly doling out lithium.

When his name gets called, Wheels wanders in and sits on a fuzzy green chair. It looks like a bag of jelly beans threw up in the office. There's some rainbow finger paintings on one side and some brightly colored flowers on another. Dr. Lewis is wearing a bright pink shirt with squiggle designs on it.

"Hey there, Derek," says Dr. Lewis. He's pretty young and gives off kids-show-host vibes. On his days off, he probably likes to coach tee-ball and call the kids "champ." "What's been up?"

What's it to him? For some reason, he imagines Grandma, Dr. Lewis, and the social worker, all conspiring together, trying to see what they can get out of him. "I don't know," he says.

"Well, what'd you do this weekend?"

"Went on a date. Then I went out for fries with my friends and did some homework." He tries to sound casual. Less to psychoanalyze.

"Ooh, a date, huh? Tell me about it."

He slouches in the chair. "Well, I had a great time."

"What'd your date think?"

He tries to think. Is it worth telling him about this? It's probably pointless. Maybe they will get him on some happy pills and try to make him fall into line, try to make him pretend that everything's fine even after this fall. But hey, he wants to tell someone who has to pretend to be happy for him. Unlike Grandma. "You know Shane McKay, right?"

"I'm not allowed to talk about my other patients."

"But you know what's wrong with him?"

Dr. Lewis shrugs. "Can't say."

Cagey bastard. Briefly, Wheels tries to recount his confusing relationship with Spike. Meeting her on the first day of junior high. Knowing her mostly as "Shane's girlfriend" until she got pregnant. Then, watching her quietly carry on, studying from home even after the school kicked her out. Finally the meeting in the hospital. He tries to keep it short and clinical. Dr. Lewis doesn't need all that sappy stuff in his report. Although he's scribbling a bit anyway. "Anyway, so I asked her over to my house—with the baby, because babysitters are hard to get, right?—and my grandma was a huge cow. Insulting her, insulting her kid. All that. So no, I don't think she had a good time on our date."

"Why do you think your grandmother was so unhappy?"

"I mean, the baby, but Spike was good with her. She didn't cry or anything, just kind of sat there. Grandma hates her for being born, that's all." He stares a hole in the floor. "It's not her fault her mom's young."

"Seems strange to me," Dr. Lewis says. "Because of how you yourself were born, I mean."

Not this shit again. "I don't want to talk about my parents, okay? Either of them."

"Well, you're going through a lot, Derek. You have to grieve for losing Mike and Cindy too, not only your parents." He looks down at him over his reading glasses.

"I'm not grieving anything," Wheels says. A fly buzzes into the light above them. "Mike's a jerk and that's the end of it. I'm just sick of living with a woman who's not my mother thinking she can complain about my friends and control my life."

Dr. Lewis looks vaguely bored. "Besides this thing with your friend, what else does she do?"

"She nags me all the time. 'Derek, you didn't wash the dishes right. Derek, why is your homework mark so low? Derek, I don't really like that Joey boy,'" he screeches.

"That doesn't sound out of line to me," Dr. Lewis says. "I have a son—he's only nine, so I know it's different—but all of those sound like things I'd say."

Okay, so the shrink’s dumb as hell. Good that he’s figuring it out on week two. "You're his father. That's the difference. She's not my mother and I wish she'd stop acting like it."

"She cares about you."

"Bullshit." Wheels looks him straight in the eyes and tries to make him flinch. "My parents went out and chose _me,_ specifically, out of all the kids they could have adopted, and she just ended up with me because of it."

"I thought you didn't want to talk about your parents."

"It doesn't matter what I tell you," he spits. "What's my social worker gonna do? Put me in a group home? That'll be great. Take me away from everybody I know."

Dr. Lewis is expressionless. How can he not care? _Well, let's add him to the list,_ Wheels thinks. He shuts up and stares at him.

There's a long silence. "He won't take you away." Dr. Lewis folds one leg over his knee. His ugly corduroy pants are too short. They hike up, exposing his gross leg hair. "I'll tell him you're starting to adjust."

"Adjust?" Wheels repeats.

"Well, you're reaching out to new people, right? This Spike girl?"

"I'm not 'reaching out,'" he scoffs. "It's not like I'm crying to her about how much life sucks with dead parents. She's got more important stuff to worry about."

"More important how?"

"Didn't I just tell you?" Wheels says. So not only is he dumb as hell, but he doesn’t even pretend to hide it. "She's fifteen, got a kid, and her kid's dad was either completely retarded or totally selfish, but either way he's about to die. He had that baby to look out for, but he didn't care about her enough not to fry his brain and jump off a bridge. And everyone feels so bad for him, but no one even cares about what it means for Spike and Emma."

"Emma?"

"The baby."

"You're really invested in the kid's well-being." He scribbles something down on a new sheet of paper.

The shrink-speak is out in full force now. "How could you have someone depending on you and not care? Especially a kid. Just— just throw a kid away. Who gives a shit, right?" No doubt Dr. Lewis is psychoanalyzing everything he says, but honestly, he doesn't care anymore. "That baby needed him. I thought he was better than that."

"It's a lot to deal with," Dr. Lewis says. "Even when you're an adult, it's tough. Or when it's unexpected."

"He's stupid.” Disgust drips from his voice. "He should have worn a rubber."

"That's not what I meant." Dr. Lewis sounds like he thinks it's funny. Prick. "Do you think your grandmother expected to get another kid?"

He glares at him. "No," he mumbles.

"How old is she?"

"Seventy-six or seventy-seven."

He shifts in his seat, but doesn't break his concerned stare. "That's almost as tough as having a kid at fifteen."

Wheels is silent.

"She lost her daughter, remember," Dr. Lewis says. "Her only daughter, right?"

Only child, not just only daughter. "I guess."

"So she's hurting too."

"She doesn't have to take it out on me," he says. It sounds stupid and pathetic the way he says it.

"She's not doing it on purpose. Look," Dr. Lewis says, "you want people to treat you like an adult. Am I right about that?"

"She treats me like I'm five."

"If you want her to treat you like an adult, you have to act like one. You have to cooperate with her."

He scowls. "So I cooperate with her, what then?"

"Well, you'll have to try it and see. Tell me how it goes," Dr. Lewis says. He stands up. "Good work this week, but our time's up. Remember, same time next week."

Wheels feels like he ran a few miles. He leaves without a goodbye.

He doesn't stick around Shane's room for very long. Mr. McKay is there. "Oh," he says. "Hello there."

Wheels waves limply from the doorway. He doesn't say anything. Like usual.

Mr. McKay isn't chatty. He sits silently and stares at Shane, sometimes patting his hand. Wheels wonders how long Shane's dad has been sitting here at his bedside vigil. Has he accepted that Shane is going to die? Is he still hoping? For a second, Wheels wonders how he'd be if his granddaughter was hospitalized instead.

Wheels feels like he's intruding on something deeply personal. There's a weird feeling in the air. He leaves silently and walks home. It's getting into that May warmth, but there's nothing comforting about it.

"How was therapy?" Grandma asks.

He shrugs vacantly. "I'm going upstairs."

"Don't you have homework?" She's annoyed. Like always.

"I finished it."

She raises an eyebrow. "Are you lying to me?"

"No, Spike and I worked at lunch, and I finished the rest in the waiting room." He doesn't have the energy for an interrogation, and he doesn't bother to pander to her with Spike's birth name.

Grandma looks at him, impossible to read. "I'm surprised."

"Yeah, me too," he says dismissively, and plods up the stairs. Grandma doesn't follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled it and apparently there is an actual band called Nuclear Disaster, although they're an obscure thrash metal band from 2006, not a punk band from 1989, so consider them unrelated. Tiger Beat, however, is a real magazine, although I'm not sure if they ever ran in Canada (Google was inconclusive). 
> 
> Wheels giving Spike (vague, unhelpful) advice about adoption comes from 1x12 "Parents' Night." Fun fact: that was one of the two episodes that inspired this fic. :D
> 
> Also, better address this now: The whole Degrassi chronology is kinda screwy (Wheels' birthday straight-up contradicts itself) so I made my best guesses on how old everyone is/what time of year it is whenever the wiki couldn't verify. As we get later in the story, I do tweak the canon timeline a tiny bit just to have the story play out in a more appropriate time span, but for the most part, I tried to make it seamless. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's reading this! If you liked it, let me know by leaving kudos or a comment! And if you didn't like it, tell me why, so I can improve. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (9/21): I know it's Wednesday, but I'll be busy the next few days and I did miss last week's update, so I decided to post this a little early. :)

Homework. Baby food. Laundry. Studying. Diapers. Want ads. Screaming fits. More work. Spike feels like a goldfish making laps in a bowl. Emma goes to bed by eight and Spike's work has barely started. Between the studying and Emma's crying jags, she stays up until three, working by flashlight. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Emma's better after a few days of her cold. She's back to her normal self. Things aren't all bad with her, normally, even when she is a time sink and a financial burden. Sometimes Spike can sleep a few hours or cuddle up with her for a while. But then Mom will see the two of them asleep, Emma against her chest and static on the TV, and Spike will have to get up and start working again.

After she gets rejected from the "bus-person" position, Spike applies for jobs as a fast-food fry cook, a checker at the drugstore, and a clerk at the gas station, among others. They either don't hire teenagers, don't hire part-time, or don't hire punks like her. Finally, Mom finds a little bit of tips-only work for her as a shampoo girl at the salon. A dollar here and a dollar there doesn't go far towards daycare. Spike sells her maternity clothes, saves her tips, and tries to hold on.

School's not much better. Liz is in a lather over the new endangered animals exhibit at the zoo. "I mean, how can they do that? Elephants aren't meant to live in Toronto! It's cruel!" Spike nods, unengaged.

"Hey, Spike! Liz!" yells a voice. They look down the hall to see Erica and Heather walking toward them. "Lucy's having a party!"

"A party?" Liz asks, sounding skeptical. "When?"

"Friday night," Erica says with a huge grin spread across her face. 

"You know how Lucy's parties are," Spike says, summing up almost two years and an entire lifetime.

"I know _you_ do." Heather laughs. "This one will be different, though. You can bring Wheels." There's a little lilt in her voice.

"We're not going steady," Spike says. Although she can see how they might think that, even putting aside what they don't see—the brief, terse, but frequent phone calls, interrupted by Emma crying and distant yells of "Derek, get off the line!" But no, not going steady, not yet. Not with Shane the way he is.

"Who said anything about going steady?" Erica says, grinning. "It's just for fun."

Spike glances at Liz. "Are you going?"

"You know I hate parties," Liz says, leaning against the locker and looking world-weary.

Spike smirks. "I have to keep asking in case you change your mind."

"What about you, Spike?" Heather's grinning too. They have identical smiles.

Memories of stolen beer and dark bedrooms shoot through her mind. "I don't know. I want to, but things are tight right now. I can't afford a babysitter."

"Maybe someone in grade seven or eight will work for cheap." Erica looks pretty proud of her clever idea.

"I'll do it for free," Liz says.

"Really?" Spike asks. Liz nods, detached from the conversation.

Maybe it will be better. It definitely won’t be like last year’s party. She’d rather die than make the same mistake twice. And maybe it’ll be fun. A nice break from school, especially right before exams. Plus, it’s not like it’ll be a one-on-one date—parties are always a different experience. Spike hugs Liz, briefly but tightly. “Thanks. I can't keep bringing the baby out."

"So are you going to bring Wheels?" Erica asks.

Spike rolls her eyes. "I'll ask him, okay?“

"Yes!" Heather says. "Oh, he is _so_ cute!"

"Heather, he's taken!" Erica says in a maternal, not sisterly, tone.

"I told you we're not going steady!" Spike can't help but smile. It’s a little ridiculous watching them flit around giggling at any sign of a budding romance. If that is what's going on, of course.

"Everyone can see it," Heather says.

Spike looks to Liz for backup, but she only says, ”It's true,” and withdraws. She still looks away any time the subject of Wheels and their not-relationship comes up.

"We only went on our first date last month," Spike protests. "And we haven't been out at all since then." Unfortunately. Every time she thinks of a cute date idea, time, money, and Emma get in the way.

"He takes up all your lunches," says Heather.

"We're _studying_."

"Yeah, studying his eyes." Erica is full of smiles. "You know, Heather and I were trying to figure out your type. I was thinking, 'Shane, then Wheels?' I couldn't see the connection."

"Maybe I don't have a type. But I'm glad to know you're concerned," Spike adds sarcastically.

"What's Shane's sign?" Erica asks with a gleam in her eye.

"Libra, I think," Spike says. Not that it matters.

Erica snaps her fingers. "Darn, Wheels is a Sagittarius. I guess you _don't_ have a type."

Liz snorts. "Who cares?"

"You're right, Liz. Spike's branching out." Erica turns to Spike. "It's nice seeing you like this. Especially after—well, you know.”

Spike feels a wave of unease. “What?”

Erica glances over at her sister, concern all over her face. “Well, after what happened to Shane.”

Spike resists the urge to shrink away from the subject. "It's not like I was in love with Shane. And I'm not in love with Wheels," she adds hurriedly when she sees Heather's eyes widen.

"Maybe, maybe not," Erica says. "But either way, isn't it tough having him be...sick? Because he's Emma's dad?"

"Erica!" Heather shoots her a dirty look. "That's a really personal question!"

"Well, I was just asking!"

Spike glances between the two of them, then at Liz, all of whom are waiting for her reply. "I don't have anything to compare it to," Spike says weakly. "So I don't know."

"If you don't know that kind of stuff without comparison, how do you know you _aren't_ in love? _"_ Heather says.

"I just know, okay?" Spike says in exasperation.

The five-minute bell rings and the twins turn to leave. "We'll see," Heather calls over her shoulder.

* * *

"Okay, let me give it a shot." Wheels clears his throat dramatically. " _Comme on-dit_ 'screw this stupid class' _en français?_ "

Spike laughs. "We're supposed to be using vocabulary words. I'm pretty sure 'screw this' isn't going to be on the test."

"It'd be more useful than half of these words. I mean, when am I going to have to talk about French politics?" He drums his pencil against his lunch tray.

"Would you rather go back to working on English?"

He looks like he's actually considering it for a second. Personally, Spike would rather be rehashing her notes on _Much Ado About Nothing_ , but she and Wheels are both _très mal_ at French, so they decided to struggle together. "...I guess not," he says, although he still sounds reluctant.

"Well, _allons-y_ , then." She thinks for a second. "How would you say, 'do you want to go to Lucy's party on Friday'?"

" _Veux-tu_ — wait, is she really having a party?"

"Heather and Erica invited me. And they specifically mentioned you."

"Well, you can't go." The way he says it, it sounds like the most obvious thing in the world. The sun will rise tomorrow. French homework sucks. Spike can't go out.

"I can so. I got a babysitter."

He looks suspicious. "I thought you were all broke."

"I am broke. Liz works for free." That's not exactly true. She may not have to pay her, but Liz will definitely inhale any non-meat food left in the fridge.

"Where was she when we went out?" He wears his normal face of quiet amusement, like he's laughing at an inside joke.

"Maybe if _somebody_ hadn't been in a rush to get me over to his house, I could have asked her," she teases.

"Hey, I didn't try anything." He holds his hands up in mock protest.

"Liz probably wouldn't do this if you had."

"Why's she care what you do?" Wheels asks.

"Remember when Joey tried to go all the way with her that one time?"

Wheels groans. "How could I forget? He wouldn't shut up about it for, like, three days. 'Come on, Wheels, you need to come to the drugstore with me 'cuz I can't buy condoms by myself.'" He rolls his eyes.

Spike hasn't heard this side of the story, but she has no trouble believing it. Joey Jeremiah: cool guy on the outside, secretly a chicken underneath. Shane didn't want to go buy condoms either. “My dad’s a minister! What if someone saw me?” was his argument. Spike’s stomach twists a little before she replies. "So Liz didn't exactly trust you, just because you're Joey's friend. But I guess you've proven yourself in her eyes. Plus," she adds as an afterthought, "she doesn't want to go anyway."

"Is it really a party without her?" he asks.

She ignores his sarcasm. "It'll be nice. No grandparents, no baby. No worries."

"No worries? How do I know you won't be worrying about the baby all night?" It sounds like a joke, but underneath, Spike knows it's true.

"I won't," she says. "She'll be in good hands." Spike grins at him.

"Yo, Wheels!" Joey yells across the cafeteria. Both of them turn around to see Joey speeding toward them, with Snake trailing behind.

"Gotta go?" she asks, although she starts putting her notes away anyway.

"Yeah," Wheels replies as he stands up. Before Spike can get up, he pecks her on the lips. Spike stops in her tracks when she feels the warmth of a blush spreading up her neck. Judging by Wheels' facial expression, what he did doesn't register with him until Joey starts snickering. He glances at her apologetically, but all he says is, "Uh, I can get your tray for you."

"It's fine; I'll get it." Joey, meanwhile, looks like he is having the time of his life. Spike gets up, both trays in hand, and walks out of the cafeteria, suppressing her silly little grin. Joey doesn't see—he's jokingly punching Wheels in the shoulder.

Liz is waiting by her locker. "Didn't you get lunch?" Spike asks her.

"I ate in the resource center," she says.

“You could’ve eaten with me.” Not that she would have, Spike knows. She hates being the third wheel.

"I wasn't alone. Tim was there." Liz shrugs. "I didn't want to interrupt your lunch...thing."

Spike sighs. "Not you, too." Are they that obvious? Is _she_ that obvious?

"I'm not saying it's bad," Liz says, although her tone makes it clear she wants to. "But it's definitely a _thing."_

"A bad thing?"

"Just a thing." Liz looks uncomfortable.

Spike cuts to the chase. "You think I'm doing something wrong."

Liz can't say it to her face. "His grandmother still hates you, doesn't she?"

"Does it matter?" Spike asks. Apparently, any time the subject comes up at home, Mrs. Phillips does her best to sidestep around it, not addressing "the baby thing" one way or the other. Maybe it's progress, maybe not.

Liz gives her a meaningful look. "Well, what about Shane?"

"You sound like Erica," she scoffs. "I wouldn't go out with him again if you paid me."

"That's not what I meant."

Spike crosses her arms over her chest. "It's been a long time since— you know."

"What happened to him?"

Spike feels her throat tighten. "You know what happened."

"But look. You can't even say it." Liz shakes her head. "I think you should wait."

"I'll take it slow," she says, but doubt creeps up her back.

* * *

Thursday, people catch them at her locker. It’s been a month and she still thinks of it as _getting caught._ It’s no secret—even if it had been, Heather and Erica would definitely have spread it around before their singular date was even over. And yet, no matter how serious they may or may not be, it feels like it should be a secret, whatever "it" is.

"...So I was wondering, what am I supposed to bring to the party?" He’s still doing that ridiculous one-arm locker lean, the one that says _I’m trying really, really hard to look cool, so play along._ She plays along. It's kind of adorable, like being barked at by a puppy.

"I don't know," Spike replies, digging through her locker. "Lucy will have Coke and chips and stuff, probably."

"Joey and Snake are thinking of getting beer."

She raises an eyebrow. ” _Snake's_ getting beer," she says flatly. "Snake _Simpson_. That Snake?"

"I know, I couldn't believe it either," Wheels says. "But Joey doesn't look nineteen, so…”

“Are you going with them?”

“Well, I mean, I could,” he says, “but I’m not going to have any, so there’s not much point. You know.” She doesn’t ask him to elaborate. He says it with the same casual weight as everything else that ties back to his parents. Really, both of them have gotten pretty good at tiptoeing around certain topics. Emma. His grandparents. Or, usually, Shane.

“Yeah, I don’t drink either.” The silence is thick. She tries to disrupt it with a return to her locker.

He looks over her shoulder. “Is your locker worse than mine? I think it is.”

Spike takes a step back and examines it. Really, it’s not _horrible—_ she does do a weekly sweep for any stray food or dirty clothes. “Oh, it is not.”

“You’ve got pictures and stuff everywhere.” He leans over and pulls off the one in his line of sight. “You met Santa Claus?”

“Hey!” Spike laughs despite herself. “It was for Emma. And anyway, I like that picture; I can have it in my locker if I want.” It is a cute picture. Six-month-old Emma’s bundled up in a puffy little snowsuit, looking confused in the arms of a mall Santa while Spike stands to the side, beaming from under a mountain of coats.

"I'm just saying, you have a lot of them." He hesitates a little.

 _Oh, I get it._ “Do I smell jealousy?” Spike teases.

He smiles wryly. “How’d you know? I always wanted to meet Santa.”

“Ha ha.” That sarcasm is going to kill one of them one day, depending who gets sicker of it. “I’d put a picture of you up, but I don’t have one.”

“Uh, I don’t think there are any good pictures of me,” he says, not quite jokingly. “Unless you want a Zit Remedy promo shot. Joey had us make some, but it's not like we need them anymore.”

Spike stifles a laugh. “Did he really?”

“Oh, yeah.” He strikes a pose that’s somehow more ridiculous than the locker lean. “The Zit Remedy: So cool, so studly.”

Spike’s laugh breaks free. “Uh-huh, right.”

“All right, so that’s a ‘no’ on the Zit Remedy thing.” He gives her a rare honest smile—no sarcasm. Those are always a pleasant surprise. “They’ll probably have one of those photo booth things at the dance, so we could get our picture made. If you still want to.”

The dance. Only two weeks away. Spike does her best to ignore the strange heaviness to his suggestion and says, “That’ll be nice.”

There’s a bit of a pause. Spike considers filling it with the questions buzzing around in her head—maybe Liz is right, and maybe things are going fast, but they only went on one date and Liz is always a bit testy with guys, and anyway—

Someone giggles behind her. Wheels straightens up and hands Spike her photo. “Hi, twins,” he says with a nod of the head.

“We’re not interrupting anything, are we?” one of the twins (Spike can't see which, but guesses it's Heather—she's more invested in their "romance") asks.

“No,” Spike says _,_ covering her disappointment under a layer of disdain. “Sorry to disappoint.”

As they walk by, Erica says, “Don’t worry, we’ll give you space at Lucy’s.”

Lucy’s. This year, she’ll be smarter.

* * *

Thursday ends and Friday comes.

Liz lets herself in at five and Spike is already trying to pull herself together. When she hears the buzzer, she lunges for the door. "Hey!" she says breathlessly.

Liz laughs uneasily. "Hey. How's Emma?"

"Fine, she needs her—bottle!" She runs to check on the kettle. "We don't have a bottle warmer, so you have to put it in a cup of warm water," she says as she prepares it. "Otherwise, she's okay. Food is in the fridge. Emma's is marked, but you can have whatever you want. She'll be waking up from her nap soon, and she had a bath yesterday, and the diaper bag is under her crib—"

"Spike. I've babysat for her before," Liz says.

Spike blinks. "Right."

"Maybe you should get yourself ready."

Spike nods and retreats to her room. She's meeting Wheels at the party, so she wonders if she should leave a little early. _Maybe you should stop by the drugstore,_ she thinks in a flash. She knows better than anyone that Lucy's parties can get heated, and Erica certainly seems to think they're planning something. Does she need to come prepared just in case? No, she decides. It's only been a short while, and he's a virgin besides—he won't try to push her into sex. And if he does, she'll push back. There's no way she'll risk getting pregnant again. There was a girl in her pregnancy group who had a "broken condom" baby, and that's not going to be her.

Time to get dressed. Something cool, this time. A band shirt that probably won't go with whatever's on Lucy's record player. Some cool striped pants that she can finally wear again. A suit vest she found at the bottom of Mom's closet. Perfect.

As she's trying to pick out a nice lipstick for tonight, the phone rings. "Liz, can you get that?" she yells.

The phone stops ringing. "It's for you." Liz's voice is low.

"Tell Wheels I'll be ready by five-thirty," she says.

"It's not Wheels," Liz says. "It's Mr. McKay."

Spike drops her lipstick. "What?" An invisible hand wraps around her throat.  _Oh no, oh no, oh no…_

"He's asking for you."

Slowly, stiffly, Spike gets up and drags herself into the hall. Her feet are made of lead. Liz puts the phone into her shaking hand. "Hello?"

"Christine?" It really is Mr. McKay.

"Yes?" Spike's mind races with a thousand unspeakable things that might have gone wrong. She holds her breath.

His voice is trembling in a way she's never heard a man's voice sound. "I thought you would want to know that Shane is awake."

For a few seconds, Spike can't find any words. Finally, she manages, "D-did he say anything?" Liz is looking at her with huge eyes.

"He can't talk," Mr. McKay says. "He can't walk. He can barely—" He takes a deep breath. "He can barely move. I thought it would be in his best interest if he saw the baby at this— this opportunity. We don't know if he may have another."

The silence is deafening. All Spike can say is, "Okay."

"If you want to bring her for a visit, it would mean a lot."

"Okay," Spike repeats. Her voice doesn't reach her ears.

"Goodbye," Mr. McKay says quietly, and hangs up.

Spike stands, holding the phone limply. "What happened?" Liz asks. "Are you okay?"

She puts the phone back on the hook. "Shane's awake." In her head, she imagined saying that a hundred times in a hundred different ways, but none like this.

"That's great!" Liz says. "Right?"

The floodgates burst. Tears start to roll down her face—inexplicable, unjustified, guilty tears. Liz hugs her as she tries to stifle her sobs. _I hope Emma doesn't wake up,_ she thinks bitterly. Ugly, selfish sniveling. Every single minute, every moment, every passing thought of _No, she's my baby and you can't see her,_ crashes back down on her head, drowning her, sweeping her away.

"What are you going to do now?" Liz asks quietly as she breaks the hug.

"Call my mother," Spike says through sniffles. "He needs to see Emma."

* * *

_I hate myself_ , Spike thinks as she carries Emma into the elevator. A burning sense of shame overtakes her as she waits to be let into the room. Emma can't tell. She wants to be let down, but Spike tightens her hug. Spike tries to push the thoughts away _(like you pushed any consideration of Shane away, you stupid selfish cow)_ but they won't get out of her head. _I hate myself,_ the only thought she has in words.

As she approaches the room, for a brief moment, she considers making a break for it. Taking Emma, running out of the hospital, and never coming back. But where would she go? Not Lucy's, not in a million years. Not home, where Liz and Mom and their questions will be waiting for her. Can she even go back to school after this? How can she? She doesn't run. Her feet are nailed to the ground. If this is right for Emma, she has to do it, even if it means swallowing fear and guilt and shame. It means shoving back new thoughts, ugly guilty thoughts of  _I don't want to see him, not like this, not here, not now, not ever._

The door is open; visiting hours are going on. Mr. and Mrs. McKay are sitting at his bedside, one on each side. A man in a lab coat is sitting further away, while another in a shirt and tie is standing with a notepad. In the middle is Shane, sitting up but supported by a pile of pillows. He looks more like himself than she expected. Bruised, pale, battered. But himself. He doesn't look at her. He doesn't look at anything.

Lab Coat gets up to greet her, stone-faced. "Hello, I'm Dr. Woods."

She takes a second to find her words. "I'm Christine Nelson," she says in a distant voice, "and this is Emma."

"What's your relation to Shane?" Tie asks her brusquely.

"He's my—" A thousand memories flash by in an instant. "I'm the mother of his daughter." She lifts Emma into view.

Tie looks at Dr. Woods. "I see. I'm Dr. Bertram, his physical therapist."

Spike takes a shaky step toward Shane's bedside. "Is it— um, can he hold the baby? Can he do that?" Her eyes flicker from Shane's parents, to each of the doctors, to Emma. She doesn't—can't, won't—look at Shane. 

Dr. Bertram shakes his head. "I don't think that'd be wise."

"Let me hold her," Mrs. McKay says. It's the first thing she's said all evening. She says it hungrily, almost.

She hasn't met Emma before.

Emma does not want to be held. She tries to wriggle out of Mrs. McKay's—her grandmother's—arms. Finally, Mrs. McKay stands Emma up on the edge of her chair, supporting her under her arms. She makes a few wobbly attempts to lean toward Shane, babbling curiously. She's only a baby. She doesn't understand.

Shane doesn't look at her until his mother taps him on the leg. Even then, his glazed stare is directed more towards the wall than his mother or daughter. He tries to say something, but it's mushy and indistinct. Emma is more articulate than he is, now. With visible effort, he squints in their direction, but there's no flash of recognition on his face.

Dr. Woods whispers to Mr. McKay, who nods in Spike's direction. "As you can probably guess," Dr. Woods says, "Shane lost some of his mental and physical faculties in the accident. Do you have sole custody of your daughter?"

They never had a legal custody battle. "She does," Mr. McKay says.

"He paid me some child support," Spike adds. "Because he wanted to. We didn't have a custody agreement." Mr. McKay looks like that's news to him. "If we have to do legal things, I'll need to call my mother."

"We don't need to do anything right now," Mr. McKay says. "I only thought it was important that your daughter see him." The implication is obvious. He leaves it unsaid. 

Mrs. McKay purses her lips and draws herself out of her chair. She hands Emma back to Spike with just a nod.

The doctors start to talk to each other. Spike pulls up a chair at the edge of the room and sits. Emma squirms in her lap. Spike knows she looks ridiculous, dressed for a party in the middle of the hospital room _(a party you shouldn't have been going to at all, Spike, what's_ wrong _with you?)._ Her face burns. She's never felt more like a stupid, selfish little kid. When Shane's parents start discussing _disability services_ and _out-patient care_ and other things Spike's barely heard of, she can't help but ask, "What's going to happen to Shane?"

Dr. Bertram gives her a look of disgust. "We don't know."

Spike shrinks in her chair and clings to Emma.

After the sun sets and visiting hours end, Spike trudges home. Liz is still there. "Sorry I hung around," she says. "I didn't know what to do. Your mom's home. I called her like you said."

"Thanks," she mumbles. Poor Liz. She shouldn't have to know. She shouldn't have to be involved.

"How is he?"

Spike only shakes her head. Her eyes are welling up with tears again. Liz puts a hand on her shoulder. What is there to say?

"Wheels called while you were out," Liz says once Spike has caught her breath. "I told him you'd call him tomorrow."

At this point, she's not sure she ever wants to talk to him again. How could she? How could she say anything to anyone? "Okay."

Liz gives her a tepid smile as she puts her backpack on. Spike barely hears the door close behind her. She puts Emma in her crib and ignores her mother calling for her. She wants to sleep, but there's only one thought in her head, clanging like a bell. _I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet y'all thought I was kidding with the angst tag, didn't you? Heads up, the next few chapters are definitely going to be closer in tone to the end of this than they are to the fluffier moments. I just thought that Spike's reaction to Shane's accident was really under-explored in canon (yes, I know "It Creeps" had a scene of them together, but other than that, it was negligible).
> 
> Timing-wise, this is the party from 3x15 "Pa-arty!" I didn't make it up out of whole cloth, but I did fudge the exact timing of the events surrounding it. Also, I hope Wheels and Spike aren't too out of character. We never really see either of them in much of a romantic context so I did have to make some assumptions. I hope they aren't too unreasonable.
> 
> Thank you for all the amazing feedback I've been getting! I'm so glad you guys are liking this weird fic about a very weird pairing. :) (And I'm glad that some of you seemed to like my oneshot, "Brotherly Love," as well, even though it's pretty different from this.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update (10/1): If you notice this fic looking better, it's because I finally switched to horizontal line breaks instead of just dashes to separate scenes! I went back and fixed up the previous chapters, so no, you aren't seeing things. :)

Friday evening. The sun is up for now, but Lucy's house still looks like it's glowing. Wheels tries to remember the last time he went to a party. Last January, maybe? Spike didn't have the baby yet and Shane was just a regular guy. And Wheels got to go home at night to his own house and his own bed. Grade eight feels like it was a million years ago.

 _It'll be fun,_ he tells himself as he walks up the porch. _Just you and her. And about a hundred other kids._

Lucy opens the door in her school clothes. "What are you doing here?" She looks like she found a rat in her bedroom.

"I'm here for the party, what do you think?" He shoves his hands into his pockets.

"By yourself? Where are Joey and Snake?"

"Getting beer."

"They're bringing—" Lucy rubs her temple. "Okay. Why are you here?"

"Spike invited me." The porch light is beating down on his neck.

She turns around and yells into the house, "Is the _rest of the planet_ coming too?!"

Erica pops into view. "Aw, c'mon, Luce," she says. "He's just one guy. And I thought you liked Spike?"

"Hey, Wheels, wanna help us move stuff?" Heather calls from somewhere he can't see.

"Uh, sure, I guess." He stands on the porch and looks past Lucy. The twins are trying and failing to move a couch across the living room. He hasn't seen Lucy's house like this before, actually. Nothing's broken.

Something crashes inside. Lucy's face pinches up. "Help them before they break something."

"We're almost done," Erica calls back. "Just help us move the easy chair."

"Great, I come to a party and I still have to do chores." He grins. "Where do you want it?"

"Just off to the side."

The chair's almost in the middle of the room. He pushes against it. It refuses to move. Attempt number two. He shoves it with both hands. It moves a few inches. _Okay, chair. This is war._ He pushes his sleeves up, plants his sneakers on the carpet, and shoves his weight against this damn cement chair.

"Not that chair, this chair!" Erica says, laughing. She points to a leather chair across the room.

He drops his arms. "Seriously?"

"We'll get it." Erica pulls Heather over to the other easy chair. "Just go find something to do."

Well, this party's off to a great start. He gets a pop out of the fridge, cracks it open, and hovers by the front door.

Seven rolls around, then eight. No Spike. No Joey or Snake, either. The lights dim and the music gets louder—some synth cheese he doesn't recognize. A grade eight girl he doesn't know laughs at him. Everyone laughs at him. He slumps against the wall and nurses his pop. 

Quarter to nine. "Lucy!" Wheels yells. "Let me use your phone!" Lucy's nowhere around. Whatever. He dials the number that's written on his mind.

"Hello?" It's Liz, the supposed babysitter.

"Is Spike there?" he shouts over the noise of a good fifty kids drinking and dancing.

"No," Liz shouts back. "Look, she's—she'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

Then a click. The dial tone rings in his ears even as he says his goodbyes to Lucy.

"Aw, c'mon, Wheels!" Heather says. "Aren't you having fun?" He pretends not to hear her as he walks down the steps.

"You're home early," Grandma notes when he comes inside.

"Yep." He walks past her.

"Didn't like the party?" _Got stood up?_ he imagines her saying. _I told you that girl was trouble._ She almost looks sympathetic. That's when he knows he's reading too much into her face.

"Nope." He stomps up the stairs.

* * *

Monday morning. Today's exams are English and math, but who cares? Wheels can't stop playing the phone call over and over again in his mind. _Did Liz say something to her? Did she forget?_ No matter what, his questions always boil down to _Why didn't she call me?_

Wheels is still replaying Friday night while he waits for Spike in the hallway. He sees her off in the distance and drums his fingers against his leg. What's she going to say? He attempts a smile as she gets closer.  

She runs up, slams open her locker, grabs her things, and starts to run away. She won't even look at him. "Hey, Spike!" he says, trying not to sound as hurt as he feels. "You didn't call me." 

Her eyes are small with hatred. Pure hatred. He almost doesn't recognize it. Annoyance, yes. Exasperation, par for the course. But hatred's new, and it burns. "Go away and leave me alone," she says very quietly and deliberately.

He leans against a locker on one arm to try and block her path. "What's the big idea? I didn't do anything to you." _Cool it, or she'll know you're upset._

"Move."

"No," he says, staring down into her eyes. He tries to dial down the defiance. It doesn't work. An argument starts bubbling up. "Don't try to push me around. Liz said you'd call me and you didn't."

"You're not my boyfriend!" she screams. "You're not even my friend! Now move!"

His ears are getting hot. He looks around to see a few dozen eyes watching him. Including Joey's and Snake's. "If you don't want to see me, _fine_ , but don't humiliate me in front of the whole school!" he yells. Spike is already walking away.

Carefully, Joey approaches. "Man, what did you _do_?" he asks in a hushed voice. He puts a hand on Wheels' shoulder.

"I didn't do anything," he replies, running a hand through his hair. _Right?_

Snake's standing a good distance away from the blast zone. "What happened on Friday?"

He considers rehashing everything that happened, but he only says, "I called her house and Liz answered. I don't know where she went."

"You didn't get grabby at Lucy's party?" asks Snake.

"She didn't even go to Lucy's party. I got stood up." He glares up at Snake. "You'd know that if you were there," he says. "I was all by myself."

"We got arrested," Joey protests. "And grounded for the rest of the millennium."

That's a story he'll have to hear another time.  "Well, Friday sucked for me too," he mumbles.

The five-minute bell rings and Wheels shuffles off to his first exam, still flushed. His pencils are sharpened, his pens write, but his mind isn't working. Garcia hands out the papers with glazed eyes. It's nice to know he cares so much. Wheels flips to the essay question in the back first, just like in exam review.

 _Question 29. (15 pts.) To what extent is George Orwell's_ Animal Farm _an effective allegory for the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union?_

He knows that he knows the answer, but it's locked behind a wall of memories. He tries to power through it.

_George Orwell's novel—_

His pencil lead snaps.

Ten hours later, or whenever the exam ends, he puts his lead-covered hands flat on the desk. He can't stop going over it in his mind. Was the answer to question fifteen A or C? Maybe it was E, all of the above. When he's not stressing over the exam, he's remembering the study sessions. Spike, actually having fun for once. Talking to people besides Liz, about things besides the baby. Playing around. Even just wanting to talk to him, as a friend or whatever else. _So what was it,_ he thinks, _A or C?_

* * *

The bell rings. Great, lunch. He slams his tray down next to Joey's.

"That history exam was awful!" Snake groans. "I totally flunked. I didn't remember anything about the Ottomans."

"Aren't they those things that you put your feet up on?" Joey asks.

"My academic career is on the line and you can't even be serious for two seconds, huh, Joey?"

"I am serious!" Joey says. "What do footstools have to do with history?"

"Wheels, tell him he's an idiot," Snake says.

He's busy shoveling down the unidentifiable goo he's been served. The faster he's done eating, the faster he can get out of this cafeteria. "What?" 

Snake looks unamused. "I said, tell Joey he's an idiot."

"He's not listening," Joey says. "Yo, Wheels, are you still wound up over Spike?"

Wheels narrows his eyes at him. He doesn't say anything.

"Did you try—oh, I don't know— _asking_ why she's mad?" Snake asks.

Wheels gives him a dirty look. "How? She won't talk to me."

"Well, then think about it. Did you insult her?"

He knew Snake was an idiot with girls, but he didn't know he was this dense. "Don't you think I'd know if I did?"

"I don't know. I'm just speculating." Snake thinks. "Maybe you forgot something important."

"If I did, I don't remember what it was." And even if he had, he doesn't think it would have earned a reaction like _that_.  

"Then maybe it doesn't have to do with you." Snake gives him a weak shrug. "Something else could've happened."

"You saw her. She was mad at  _me_." He looks over Snake's shoulder out at the other tables. Liz and Spike keep shooting daggers at him.

Joey cranes his neck. "Well, I don't know what her deal is, but she looks like she wants to rip your tongue out and shove it back down your throat."

Snake coughs on a forkful of food. "Descriptive."

Like usual, talking about things is accomplishing exactly nothing. "Guys, just leave it," he sighs. "She'll get over it or she won't, okay?"

"Wheels, you're tearing your napkin into little pieces."

He looks down. The shreds are falling into his lap. "Yeah, so?"

Snake and Joey exchange a look.

"I figured out I'm screwed for math," Wheels says. It's not a lie, and maybe it'll make them finally shut up.

Snake looks wary, but he goes into Teacher Mode anyway. "Don't forget, before you factor an equation, you have to get it into standard form, which is..."

Wheels nods and pretends to listen.

* * *

After lunch comes math. He should’ve gotten that tattoo of the quadratic formula on his arm like he wanted.

As he's looking for his ruler at the bottom of his locker—is it under the moldy sandwich or the unwashed gym clothes?—he hears a voice behind him. Familiar, but not familiar enough. "Hey."

He stands up too quickly and whacks his head on the top of the locker. "Ow!" It's Liz, skulking around and looking like she bit into a lemon. "What do you want?"

"Look, I really thought Spike was going to talk to you," she says.

"Yeah, right."

Liz crosses her arms over her chest. "I did!"

"Yeah, and I bet you have to wash your hair tonight, too, right?" 

She touches the shaved part of her hair reflexively. "I'm trying to help you out here."

"Sure you are." He turns back toward his locker and tries to dig up that ruler.

"Fine, be like that. Jerk." She's starting to walk away when she says, "You'd better not be like this to Spike. She already feels bad enough getting close to you."

Great, another person who thinks he goes around conning his way into girls' pants. First Grandma, now Liz. "I didn't do anything to her!" Wheels protests. "I know you think I'm a total creep or whatever, but I didn't do anything, all right?"

“Not everything's about you, Wheels.” She hesitates. "Shane woke up on Friday night. And he's— not himself."

An unidentifiable knot appears in his stomach. "Not himself, like how?"

"I don't know. She didn't tell me." The anger's faded out of her face. Now she looks sour and miserable. "She went to see him and came home crying."

He can't help but picture it. He tries not to, but the thought forces its way in. Spike, alone—or with the baby, maybe—meeting a Shane that's "not himself." A former Shane. He squeezes his eyes shut. "So, what does that mean—" _For us_. "—for me?"

"I don't know, okay? She'll barely talk to _me_. I'm supposed to be her best friend." Her voice breaks. She tries to cover it up with a cough. "I just thought you should know."

He sighs sharply. _Because I'm gonna know what to do, right?_ "Well, I’ve got math right now. What exam does she have tomorrow morning?"

"Geography, but she's taking her exams in the resource center."

"What, are they quarantining her again?"

Liz shrugs one shoulder. She looks so lost without Spike around, like she's walking around in dim light. "So you'll talk to her?"

It won't help. He won't know what to say, as if there's something he _could_ say that would fix it, as if talking about shit ever fixes it. And that's assuming she'll want to hear from him at all. But he doesn't say that. All he says is, "I'll try."

* * *

If English was hard, math is brutal. He's pretty sure he'll have nightmares about binomials tonight. Wheels wanders home and collapses on the couch.

"How was school?" Grandma asks.

"Fine." He reaches for the remote.

"Which exams did you have?"

"English and math." 

Grandma squints and tilts her head like she's not exactly sure what she's looking at. "Are you feeling all right? You seem ill."

"I said I'm fine." He flips the TV on.

She raises an eyebrow. "What happened at school today?"

"I told you, I took the English and math exams." He scoffs. "Get off my back."

Her mouth hangs open. She looks like a fish. "What's wrong with you today? You've been so good lately. Going to class, doing your homework, doing chores when I ask you to..."

Wheels stares at the TV. _Days of Passion_ is on. Damon King is sucking some girl's face off.

"Are you having problems with someone at school?" She sits down next to him. He scoots away. "Joey? Archie? …Christine?"

"Why do you care? You don't even like her." It takes a second before he realizes what he said. Not that it matters.

"Well, I don't like seeing you upset." Her voice is like aspartame— sugary but fake. "What's wrong?"

"She hates me. Happy?"

"What happened?" Grandma asks, looking almost understanding.

He refuses to look away from the TV. "She screamed at me in front of half the grade." 

Hesitantly, Grandma puts a hand on his shoulder. "Girls come and go."

He shrugs her hand off. "Emma's dad—" Grandma doesn't hide her shock very well. "Oh, you don't care anyway."

"If something happened—"

"If something happened, you'd be thrilled," he says, because he can't resist digging himself deeper when enough people are already mad at him.

For a split second, Grandma actually looks hurt. "I was only concerned about her judgement."  

"Right." He stands up and heads for the stairs.

Grandma purses her lips. "Forgive me for not wanting to see you in a bad situation."

 _Bad situation._ Understatement of the century.

* * *

"So anyway, there we were, outside with two-thirds of a case of beer. And I'm thinking, 'You know what we need before we go? We need some beers for ourselves.' So we crack open two bottles—"

"—I told him it was a bad idea," Snake rushes to say. "Told him. Didn't I tell you?"

"You still drank one," Joey replies.

"I had two sips—"

"—two sips! We barely had any—"

"—it was  _so_ not worth it.  Joey, I swear I'm never listening to you again."

Joey has a huge misplaced grin stuck to his face. "Oh man, we totally got picked up by the cops! They shoved us in the cop car and everything!"

"I thought my mom was going to explode," Snake adds. "It was worse than when we 'borrowed' the car. She was ready to murder us both, I swear."

"Man, she looked like a tomato. Bright red." Joey laughs. "She was gonna leave us in jail all night."

Wheels glances at them. Joey looks entirely too happy to have a criminal record, while Snake can't decide if he should be bragging or trying to pretend he wasn't involved. "Wow, you guys are real geniuses," Wheels says.

"Like you wouldn't have joined in," Joey says.

He doesn't bring out the planned _hell no_ _,_ _my parents were killed by a drunk driver_ talk— that's an entirely new can of worms—so he says, "Even if I did, I'm not dumb enough to get arrested. I'm never going to jail."

They pass by the resource center on their way to their lockers. The distinctive _help me_ and _Joey was here_ markings on the door make it hard to miss. Wheels says, "Hey, guys, I'll catch up with you later," and breaks away. Joey and Snake keep on chatting about their brush with the law.

He knocks on the door. For a second, there's only the noise of the people walking by until he hears the door unlatching. "Ms. Avery's not here," Spike says, and starts to shut the door again.

"Hey, wait a minute." He jams his foot in between the door and the door frame.

"I told you, _go away_." She won't look at him.

"Spike—" he starts. _Spike, I want to know what's going on. Spike, you should talk to me. Spike, you can't just hide._ "—other people need to use this room."

She stops pressing against the door, but she still doesn't open it. "It's for studying, not talking."

"I'll make it quick. I have French in ten minutes."

"Just leave me alone.”

He gets into the room in pieces. First his leg. Then his arm. Finally he's able to elbow his way in. The room is empty except for the two of them, sectioned off for Spike's exam. "I want to know what happened on Friday."

"It's none of your business," she mumbles. She's standing a good distance away from him, hanging near the wall.

"Liz said something happened to Shane."

"I told her not to tell anyone!" She slaps the wall.

Wheels walks around her, trying to get her to look him in the eyes. "Wait a minute. Just because Emma's his—"

"Emma's mine!" she snaps.

"Just because he got you pregnant," he corrects, "doesn't mean you get to keep stuff like that a secret. Other people care about him too."

"Oh, really?" she says, finally looking at him with those hateful eyes. "If you care so much, then why weren't you there on Friday night? Why weren't you there listening to the doctors say he'll never come back to school?

A rush of nausea fills him. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's—" She buries her face in her hand. "He can't walk, can't talk, can barely move. He didn't even recognize Emma. They said he'll never be— like he was." The buzzing of the lights fills the silence. "Was that enough?" she says almost inaudibly. "Will you leave me alone?"

For a second, he can't say anything. He stares blankly at her, but she doesn't lift her hand from her face. Shane, never coming back. Or at least, never coming back as himself. He might as well have died. And Spike's on the other side, hiding, as if that could change anything. He wants to say he knows the feeling, but he doesn't, not exactly. And neither will anyone else if she stays like this.

After a minute, Wheels finds his arms. He tries to pull Spike in for a hug, but she shoves her arms out in front of her. "Don't." The acid creeps back into her voice.

"Why not?"

"Don't touch me," she says in a shaky voice.

"Trust me, you need it," he says, and tries again.

"No!" She shoves him back, lightly but firmly. "I don't want to see you anymore!"

"I thought you said we weren’t seeing each other." He considers asking if she's okay. _Of course she's not okay, you idiot,_ he thinks. But there's something else wrong with her. Not just grief. Not just anger.

"Good thing," she spits. "Maybe you'd go flying off a bridge too."

"So it's your fault Shane fell?" Even at a time like this, he can't keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"He jumped."

"He _fell_ ," he says again, as if repeating it will make it true.

"He jumped! I know he jumped!" She balls her hands into fists. "He wanted to die because I was selfish!"

Wheels takes half a step back. "Spike, he had a bad trip."

"He just wanted to see the baby! That was it! But I wouldn't let him because I was too busy being around people like _you_!" Her eyes are brimming with tears. If it were any other time, any other person, he'd pull her close and just hug her. Fuck the French exam. But Spike turns away and wraps her arms around her chest. Her sniffles turn into sobs and there's nothing he can do.

Someone knocks on the door. Wheels can barely take his eyes off of Spike, but somehow he manages to open it.

Ms. Avery stands in the doorway, a small pile of papers in her arms. She glances back and forth between Spike, who's still inconsolable, and Wheels, who's standing around like the useless jackass he is. "What happened here?" she asks carefully.

"I—" Why can't he say it? Why won't his brain work?

Ms. Avery puts a hand on his shoulder. "I think you should go. Have some water, take a break. Then take your exam. I’ll explain it to your teacher. Okay?"

He nods stupidly and walks toward the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ms. Avery put her arm around Spike's shoulders. _At least someone's hugging her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it sounds like a plot contrivance to have Spike take her finals by herself, but I actually checked the episode where they take finals (3x16 "Bye Bye Junior High," for the curious) and inexplicably, she _is_ taking hers alone, with Ms. Avery supervising. No idea why. So I didn't make it up, but I did exploit it for drama. :P Similarly, Joey and Snake (and Wheels, in canon) did, in fact, get arrested for underage drinking in "Pa-arty"— although Wheels wasn't drinking for the same reason mentioned here, Snake and Joey were, and all three of them got in trouble.
> 
> Bonus points for whoever can remember which episode Damon King and his horrible mullet-y soap opera are from. Yes, I had to google the name of the show-within-a-show.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left such amazing feedback on chapter 6! I hope you like this chapter too. I think it might be my favorite so far, because I live for angst and awkward Zit Remedy comic relief. I hope the sheer amount of dialogue isn't too bad.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: More so than previously, chapter 8 contains fairly extensive discussion of suicide (not consideration, just discussion) and drug abuse, so if you're sensitive to that, be warned. It's all around canon-typical levels, though.

For once, Spike is glad that Emma woke her up. Fitful sleep isn't doing either of them any good. She changes her and gives her a bottle—she’s getting too old for formula, but it’s comforting and an easy grasp at stability for both of them. Still, Emma’s upset. Mom would call her _fussy,_ but that seems wrong somehow. She can sense that her mother is upset, Spike knows.  Does she have even a tiny, baby-sized idea of why? No. She doesn’t. She’ll never know.

Maybe Emma will know once her mother starts mixing the formula with a little less powder and a little more water. Or maybe it’ll be in a year or two when Spike goes straight from her first job to her second and Emma wonders why the other kids get to leave day care before sunset. Or maybe it’ll be later, in elementary school, when parent-teacher conferences start and Emma sees the teachers hesitate a little before they give her mother her marks. Not now, but someday soon, Emma will know there’s something wrong with their situation. But right now, Spike’s staring down the barrel of her future and her daughter doesn’t have any idea.

Emma finishes off the bottle, but Spike isn’t ready to put her back to bed. Maybe that’s selfish, but she has to cling to her. She presses her to her chest and feels her breath slowing. She’s grown so much in only a year. A far cry from the tiny little thing in the incubator, curled up and impossibly fragile, born too early and barely holding on. Emma's healthy now, bright-eyed and chubby.

And she has a little hair. Strawberry blonde.

It was jarring the first time she noticed how much Emma looked like Shane. She was able to pick out a little of herself (the eyes) and of Mom (the mouth), plus a few miscellaneous traits that could have come from anywhere (Dad? Mrs. McKay? Further back?). But the ears, the nose, the little forehead wrinkles she gets when she’s concentrating— those are all Shane. The resemblance might go away, but it might not. _And what are you going to do if you wake up one day and she looks just like him and you think about how you sent him to the edge of that bridge_ —

She can’t snap out of it. No matter what, the thoughts are always there, churning in the back of her mind. Shane and the party and the concert and what she could have done - _should have_ done - differently. If only she'd said _not without a condom_ or _the baby’s going up for adoption_ or _sure, you can see her tonight._ Would it have been different if he’d had Emma to live for? If they’d never had Emma at all?

Emma's asleep now, heavy in her arms, content and drooling. But Spike’s awake. Spike’s awake and she can’t get back to sleep.

* * *

Liz tries her best. Really, she does, but there’s not much she can do. “Hey, what exam do you have this morning?” she calls, jogging up behind Spike even as she’s trying to shove her way into school.

“French or math or something.”

“Ugh, I hate French,” she says casually. “How much did you study last night?”

“I didn’t.” Spike tries to disappear into the crowds, but she can’t hide anywhere. Everything’s _normal_. Everyone’s at their lockers chatting. Posters advertising the graduation dance are plastered to the walls and the announcements are still droning overhead. Even Liz sounds normal. How can she be normal?

“What’d you do instead?”

“Worked on my budget.”

Liz raises her eyebrows, but her voice stays even. “You know, I was talking to my mom about it, and she said that maybe you could take Shane’s parents to family court and make them give you child support.”

It takes a second for the words to mean anything. There’s so many problems with her suggestion that Spike picks the first one that comes to mind. “Liz, when am I going to have time to go to court?”

“I don’t know. But it can’t hurt to try.” Liz shrugs, as if she was simply suggesting where to eat after school.

It _could_ hurt to try. It would hurt to have to look Mr. and Mrs. McKay in the eyes again and say _I’m sorry your son is permanently brain-damaged, but I need you to support his bastard daughter._ It feels so cold even thinking about it. And yet, she really does need the money. Even Shane’s twenty dollars a month meant a lot. “We’ll make it until graduation,” Spike says firmly. “Then I’ll get a job.”

“What are you going to do once grade ten starts, though?” Liz asks.

Spike leaves it unsaid.

Liz gasps. “You can’t drop out!”

“It’s not like I have much choice,” Spike says with an edge in her voice.

“But you’re so smart!”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?” She tries to speed away from Liz, the conversation, and the uncertainty of the whole month standing in front of her.

Liz grabs for her arm and tries to pull her back. “Just because Shane threw away his future doesn’t mean you should too!”

Spike freezes.

What can she even say? Her first impulse is to agree with Liz. Shane _did_ throw away his future, not just now but in grade eight, too. He never thought before he did anything, no matter what. But as soon as the words form in her mind, she feels sick. How can she blame him when she’s spent almost two years talking about what a loser he is, refusing to be around him, ignoring all his calls? She can’t. And she can’t say that to Liz either. She wouldn’t understand.

“Don’t say that,” she says quietly, because she can’t defend either him or herself.

“Why not? It’s true!” Liz doesn’t even look angry. She knits her eyebrows together and speaks slowly, as if Spike were the one with brain damage. “He spent time with his loser, druggie friends instead of helping you.”

“I didn’t _let_ him help me.” Even if he wasn’t there before Emma was born, he legitimately wanted to see her after, Spike knows. But, of course, she only knows that now, after it doesn’t matter any more.

“He still should’ve known better than to drop acid with _Luke Matthews_ ,” Liz says in disgust. Luke Matthews, flunky of the year. His most notable achievement was making a single basket at one game six months ago. Other than that, he mostly spends his time skulking around the school and thinking of new excuses for missing homework.

Once upon a time, he made a weird duo with Shane the pastor’s son. But that was last year.

“It wasn’t Luke’s fault,” Spike says, because at least Luke was there as a friend, even if that meant getting high and dealing with the consequences.

“Luke’s a dealer! Spike, didn’t you think there was a _reason_ Shane did drugs?”

She’d barely thought about what was going through his head before the concert, only what he must have been thinking when he was standing at the edge of the bridge. Of course there must have been some reason he'd gotten high before he jumped, but she'd never made the connection to Luke. Maybe he wanted to forget about his parents’ disappointment for one night, or forget that he’d be spending his life supporting a kid he’d never see. Or maybe he only wanted to dull the pain on impact. “Oh, how would you know?” she snaps. “You don’t know anything!”

Liz stares at her. “Spike—“

Spike doesn’t back down. She locks eyes with Liz, whose resolve is wavering for the first time. “He’s the one who wanted to keep Emma, not me!” she yells. “If it was up to me, she’d have gone up for adoption!”   

“He was never there for either of you!” Liz repeats. “Maybe it’s—“ She hesitates.

Spike knows what’s coming, but she has to ask anyway. “Maybe it’s what?”

“I…”

Spike goes deadly quiet and steps closer to her. “Maybe it’s _what,_ Liz?”

Through gritted teeth, Liz says, “Maybe it’s better that he’s out of her life.”

Before she can tear into Liz and her stupid, shortsighted, irrational hatred of everybody else, the bell rings. Spike glares at her and melts into the crowd.

* * *

She fights her exhaustion and nausea throughout the exam. Ms. Avery hasn’t said anything about yesterday. She’s probably afraid to. _Yes, Ms. Avery, I promise I'll talk to my mother tonight,_ she lied. _I'm fine. It's okay. Just let me take the geography exam; I'll feel better after._ Ms. Avery couldn't have believed her. Spike couldn't even believe herself.

Spike finishes the paper in a haze, hands it in, and tries to leave before she can be intercepted. It doesn’t work.

“Spike,” Ms. Avery says in her calm, authoritative way. “I’d like to talk to you.”

Spike obliges silently, lingering in the doorway.

“It’s about your performance this semester. Obviously, your marks haven’t been finalized, but…” She looks at her sympathetically. “Well, I don’t think they’re as good as they could be. Do you?"

She should be doing better. If things were different, she would. Last year and the year before, she was one of the top five students in the grade. Now, though, _school_ falls into the ever-expanding list of things she has to give up for Emma's sake. Money and time and friendships, and now, school.

“They aren’t important," she says bitterly. "I’m not coming back next year.”

“Don’t say that. You’re too bright a girl to drop out." Ms. Avery stands close, her arms held open in anticipation of a hug. Her eyes are soft. She’d know what to do. She’d never have to choose between her future and her daughter. She’d be able to take care of Emma, no matter what.

Ms Avery continues, “Now, if you retake some courses in correspondence over the summer, you could get your marks high enough to go into the academic program for grade ten. I know you'd succeed there.”

Correspondence courses. As if she’ll have time for that while working full-time. The summer after grade nine is the start of the rest of her life. “I can’t.”

Ms. Avery puts her hand on Spike’s shoulder. “I know things have been difficult for you lately, but you can definitely recover.”

“I’ll just be another statistic,” Spike says, nearly choking on the word. Just another teenage mother. Just like Mom, struggling to keep both the salon and the apartment. Just like Mom, having _dropout_ and _failure_ and _disappointment_ stamped across her face wherever she goes.

“No, you won’t. We can help you.” Ms. Avery looks so full of pity. “I have the forms in my office. You can pick them up Friday afternoon—"

Spike leaves.

* * *

The bell rings. After the crowds thin out a bit, Spike goes to get her sack lunch from her locker. She opens it and memories pour out. Some of her wall decorations come loose, a time capsule of grade nine. The first photos she had made of Emma, still new and pink—was that really only last summer? A few sketches that Liz drew ( _Still Life IV: Study of a Lunch Tray_ ). Cutouts from magazines, band posters, cute little doodles on sticky notes. Underneath all of them, a Polaroid waits for her. It's from the grade eight fall carnival, a few weeks before the party. She’s standing near some pumpkins with Shane draped over her and smiles on everyone’s faces. Behind them are some of Shane's friends: Snake, still slightly out of place; BLT, having the time of his life; and Luke. Luke, smiling tightly, looking almost like he was pasted into the photo after the fact. That was before he got into ( _they_ got into) cigarettes, into weed, into pills. Into acid.

Instinctually, she wants to tear the photo into tiny shreds so that no one could ever put it together again. She tries to muster up the burning hatred, the resentment she used to feel— because, damn it, she _did_ hate him. Didn’t she? She must have, at least at some point, just like she used to like him a long time ago. Every time she missed first period because of morning sickness, she hated him in a way she couldn’t put into words. He's the one who got her into this entire situation, and she has to pick up the pieces. Again. Like always. Just like before, she'll be scraping by and dealing with the baby, _again_ , and he won't be there, _again_.

He won't be there, though, because he'll be in the hospital.

She can't hate him anymore. Intellectually, she knows she doesn't have a reason to stop hating him. And maybe she should hate him a little more because of what he did— because now what? Now what are they going to do? He didn't even love Emma enough to look out for himself, let alone look out for her the way Spike does. She’s constantly questioning what is and isn't okay to do. Can she cut class in the afternoon and take Emma home from day care early? Should she spend her time studying for history or looking for jobs? Shane never had to question himself. He came to school, hung out with his friends, and went home. But now, he's like this. If he'd only gotten a little scratched up, or disappeared and returned unharmed, then maybe things would be different. Maybe she could have chewed him out for a while and things would have gone back to the way they were. Improved, even. But now it's different.

Why did he do it? Why did he want to die?

It shouldn't have to be like this. If only she'd forgiven him sooner, or been better to him, or let him see the baby the way he wanted. After everything, he _did_ want to see her. Even after all his protests about his parents, he did want to be part of Emma's life, but that wasn't enough. If only Spike had seen that, she'd have let him. There was something she could have done, even if she's not sure what it was. There had to have been something. She could have stopped him.

Too little, too late.

She takes the Polaroid down, drops it onto the bottom of her locker, and tries to find her lunch. It should be on the shelf at the top. She stands on her toes and feels around for it, but her fingers catch on something plastic. Of course. _Of course,_ it’s the demo tape for “Everybody Wants Something,” that _idiotic_ song that reminds her of every single mistake she’s ever made. And of course it’s her own fault—why did she kiss Wheels? Why did she let herself do that? How could she stand to go out and have fun after she drove Shane to jump?

Because it _was_ fun, even though it was ugly and rotten underneath. The goodness of the whole thing makes it worse. If he’d been awful to her—groped her or called her a stupid bitch or something equally repulsive—it’d have been different. Just a stupid mistake in a long line of stupid mistakes. But this is so much worse, because even with his grandmother hating her it was _good_ and _fun_ and _sweet_ and she doesn’t deserve that. Not after what she did. She throws the tape against the inside of her locker as hard as she can.

The noise summons a twin. Spike doesn’t look away from the clutter. “Spike? Are you okay?”

“Go away."

“You’ve been acting really weird lately,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

She stares at the place where the tape landed and tries to sound as angry as she feels. “I said _go away,_ Erica.”

“I’m Heather,” she says quietly. “What’s going on? Do you want to talk to Liz? I can go find her. Or Wheels? He’s here too.”

“Leave me alone!" she yells. Heather backs away.

Spike slams her locker shut and storms outside, away from all this, like she could get away from any of this.

Outside, there’s a little patio and an informal smoker’s area. The weather isn’t great—cool and damp for June—so only a few smokers are out. She doesn’t know most of them. Dwayne and his cronies. A few grade eights she barely recognizes.

And Luke.

There he is, sitting against the pavement and taking a drag in the sticky gray air. He doesn’t see her. He doesn’t know what’s going on, not really. Does he know what happened on Friday? Does he care? How can he not care?

Does he hate her for what she made his best friend do?

Under some power that’s not her own, she marches up to him. “I want one.”

“Spike?” His eyes widen and he scrambles to hide the cigarette behind his back, like hiding the cigarette can change who he is and who Shane was.

“I want a cigarette.”

He glances around and hunches forward. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened to Shane, but I don’t—“

“Just give me one!” she yells, because if she waits a second for more of an explanation she won’t do it, and she needs to do it out of shame or anger or whatever’s tearing her up inside.

Hatred.

Good.

Luke holds the unlit cigarette away from her like he’s teasing a dog with a treat. “I told him he didn’t have to take it,” he says under his breath. “I thought it’d be fun. That was it.”

She can’t even dignify that with a response because it opens up a thousand new questions, questions that nobody would be able to answer except Shane. She snatches the cigarette out of his hand. Luke fumbles for his lighter and lights the cigarette like a fuse. Spike sucks down every ounce of ash she can before she has to cough and gasp for air. Great. She takes another drag.

“Whoa, slow down,” Luke says. “They’re expensive if you smoke ‘em fast.”

She takes another drag. Her head is spinning— from what, she’s not sure. The smell is soaking into her. Something clatters behind her but she doesn’t turn around.

Luke stomps his out. “Uh, Spike?”

She holds onto the rapidly shrinking cigarette for dear life.

“Spike, cut it out.”

She’s going to smoke it to the filter.

A hand comes to rest on her shoulder. “Miss Nelson.”

She drops the cigarette and turns around. Neat little rows of kids are standing on the patio. “Mr. Raditch,” she says, because she can’t say anything else. She gives one last hacking cough. Pitiful.

“Good of you to be outside preemptively, but you shouldn’t smoke while the fire alarm is going off—or in general, for that matter.” He glares down at her. “You’ll be coming with me shortly.”

Spike feels the dozens of eyes staring into her. They know what she did. Not just now. They know her. Spike stands on the patio and waits for the bell to stop clanging in her ears. Then, Mr. Raditch leads her inside.

* * *

Mr. Lawrence and her mother flank her on each side, but neither of them look at her.

“As you know, Ms. Nelson, smoking on school property can come with serious penalties.”

“But it’s so unlike her,” Mom says. “She doesn't smoke.”

“We are very strict on tobacco use here at Degrassi, even for first offenses.”

Spike sits in the chair and waits. They can smell the smoke. She knows they can. They can smell it on her.

“Christine will have to stay after school tomorrow to make up this afternoon’s exam,” Mr. Lawrence says. “I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that she go home and talk to you, Ms. Nelson. And—“ He grabs a pamphlet from his desk and hands it to Mom. “If she needs counseling, here’s a list of phone numbers.”

Counseling. Great. Because she didn’t have enough of that with support group. She stares at the floor.

Mom and Mr. Lawrence talk for a little while longer before Mom says, “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go home.”

“Don’t call me that,” she says, because that’s what she calls Emma and if she has to think about Emma and Shane anymore she’s going to snap. She follows Mom out to the car. They drive home in silence.

Mom has to go back to work, but she leaves her with a promise that they’ll talk about everything that evening. Emma is at day care. For the first time in a year, Spike is home alone. The apartment is eerily silent. It doesn’t feel like home when it’s quiet. She steps over toys and tries to collect her thoughts, but they float away from her.

She needs to distract herself or she really _is_ going to snap. If she keeps worrying about it, keeps getting all wound up over things that can’t change and won’t change, about what’s going to happen a month or a year from now—

A bath. That’d be nice. She runs the water scalding hot. Perfect. She pulls off her disgusting smoky clothes and gets in the tub, watching the water move, ignoring the stinging. It should distract her, but she only stares blankly into space. Emma’s rubber ducks are staring at her. _I wonder if I can stay in here until Mom gets home,_ she thinks. The phone is ringing out in the hall. She doesn’t answer it, only stays motionless in the tub while the water turns icy. Everyone’s voices come back to her. _Spike, he had a bad trip. Maybe it’s better that he’s out of her life. I told him he didn’t have to take it._ And maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re all right, and he really was a horrible father and a self-centered loser.

But even so, he didn’t deserve to end up that way. He didn’t deserve to jump.

Even with the bath, her thoughts are relentless, so Spike gets out, puts on a shirt and sweatpants, and heads to bed at four in the afternoon. The sun streams into her room. She hides under the blanket.

She doesn’t realize she was sleeping until Mom wakes her up that evening. "You don't have to get up," she says softly. "I'm just putting Emma in her crib."

She sits up. "No, I need to work." She should study, but then again, marks only matter if she's staying in school. Besides that, though, there are other things to do.

“If you’re tired, you should sleep. I can hold down the fort, you know.”

No. Spike can’t sit around while Emma needs her—now more than ever. She could be looking for a job, or cleaning up, or doing anything besides wallowing around. “I’m not tired.”

Mom looks skeptical. “Did you look through those pamphlets?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should.” Mom sits at the edge of the bed. It reminds Spike of nights filled with bad dreams from a long, long time ago. “It might be good for you.”

“I don’t want to,” she says faintly. “I’ve already been to counseling.”

“That was different. It was a support group.” She wraps her arm around her shoulder. “There’s nothing shameful about going to counseling.”

Spike knows she’s right—or would be, if things were different. If it was an accident, a _true_ accident, something she’d had nothing to do with. A house fire, an assault, a car wreck. Just bad luck. But it wasn't. She can't ever let go of that. "Don't make me go."

"I can't _make_ you go," Mom says, "but I really think you need to. Even once or twice, just to help you recover."

"Why should I get to recover?" she says, half to herself.

"Honey, you need to." There's nothing accusatory in her voice. Spike wishes there were. "You need to talk about this. If not to a counselor, then someone."

“Like who?”

“Well, me, first and foremost. Or your friends.” Very gently, she says, “Liz called the salon. She says she’s barely seen you all day.”

Whether she was right or not, Spike couldn’t look at her after what she said. “Every time I'm around my friends, something bad happens,” she says bitterly.

“Oh, that’s not true.”

“It is so.” Her voice cracks. “I go to a party in grade eight and get pregnant. Then I go to a concert and Shane disappears. I try to go on a date and— this happens." She shrinks. _This happens. I ruined two lives._ Because Emma, too, is a casualty of this. Except she’s even worse off, almost. Shane won't ever know there's anything wrong. But Emma is going to grow up one day, and grow up wrong because of everyone else’s mistakes.

Mom looks heartbroken. ”It's not your fault."

"Yes, it is. I should have demanded that twenty dollars. I should have said, 'Shane, I need that to feed Emma, and I won't take no for an answer.'"

"No one knew he was going to try drugs," Mom says.

"I should have."

"There was no way of knowing." Mom's voice is soft as she rubs Spike's back.

"I should've known," she repeats numbly. "I should've known."

"Even if you had known, what could you have done?"

Spike doesn't have an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Spike. Things will get better, I promise. I'm sorry I had to post this chapter a little late. Although I might not always succeed at it, I will do my best to stick to weekly Friday updates!
> 
> Just to clarify: _I_ know that canonically Luke isn't a drug dealer, just a user, but I didn't see why Liz would have any reason to know that. I thought it was reasonable that she and Spike think of him as a dealer. After all, he is the one who gave Shane acid, even if he got it from another source.
> 
> Thank you for all the wonderful feedback on chapter 7. <3 I was so excited when I saw that this fic broke 100 hits!! Thank you so much!! I hope you enjoy this chapter, as much as you can enjoy something dark like this.
> 
> Also, thank you to everyone over at r/fanfiction's Discord chat who helped me iron out the kinks of this chapter, especially [yesthisiskitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yesthisiskitty/profile), who gave very detailed feedback to help fix the chapter's many, many problems.


	9. Chapter 9

In the dumbest twist of fate ever, the French exam isn’t actually that bad. Sure, Spike’s a wreck, Shane’s life is completely trashed, and there’s nothing Wheels can do to fix any of it— but hey, at least the fucking French exam was okay.

He’s not particularly interested in dealing with Joey or Snake, but they pounce on him as he trudges out of the classroom. In a weird way, Joey reminds him of a jack-in-the-box, constantly waiting to spring something idiotically chipper on him.

“Dude!” Joey yells. “I think the math exam was the same as last year’s! Garcia used all the same problems and everything!”

“You failed the math exam last year,” Snake cuts in. Wheels hangs back and waits for them to shut their mouths.

“Yeah, well.” Joey waves a hand in Snake’s general direction before turning to Wheels. “Why’d you run off and leave us this morning? Didn’t you want to hear about how we’re hardened criminals now?”

Wonderful. Joey and Snake are laughing it up like usual. “I had to go talk to Spike,” Wheels says flatly.

“Oh, really?” Snake asks. “She still mad at you?”

“Yep.” Snake and Joey, apparently, are perfectly happy to stand around slack-jawed and clogging up the hallway, but Wheels isn’t. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and starts heading for the lockers.

Joey wedges himself in Wheels’ path and asks in his smarmiest tone, “And….?”

“And she broke up with me.”

Snake glances over at Joey, eyebrows raised. He thinks he’s subtle, but he’s not. “Why?”

“She…” In the quick transition from the meltdown to the exam, he didn’t even consider a cover story. He needs one; there’s no way he’s telling them the truth. Not yet. Maybe in a day or a week or however long it’ll take for the news about Shane to get out, they’ll piece it together. But now? It’s not fair to anyone. It’ll put Spike out on display, make her into something for people to whisper about. And Wheels will get dragged into whatever rumors inevitably start swirling. “She said I’m too clingy. Things were getting too serious, or whatever, I don’t know.”

“Aw, man, I thought she really liked you,” Joey says. So he fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Of course he did. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Snake starts with, “Well, maybe—”

“Look, are we gonna stand here all day? Let’s go get some lunch.” Wheels starts walking.

Joey looks back at Snake for a second. “All right, sure. I think today’s pizza day.”

“Oh, hey, pizza’s a great idea,” Snake says in his fake pep-talk voice. “If you guys want to come over to my house after school and study, I’m sure Mom will let us order pizza.”

“Not tonight — Wheels has that thing.”

“What thing?” Wheels asks, because it’s not like he’s in the mood for going out anywhere.

“Isn’t today Tuesday?” Joey asks casually. “Don’t you have to go see that therapist guy on Tuesday?”

He stops walking. “Oh, great. Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Oh.” Snake sounds a bit uncertain as he says, “Maybe tomorrow, then?”

Joey has to butt in, again shoving his way into their line of sight. “No, you know what we need to do? Next Friday, we’ll all go out and order, like, five pizzas, and we can all sleep over at my house. It’ll be awesome! Instant cheer-up.”

“Next Friday?” Snake asks. “So after the dance, then.”

Right. The dance is still going on. Why wouldn’t it be? “I’m not going to the dance.”

“Aw, come on,” Joey says. “There’s nothing wrong with going stag. You can hang out with us.”

“Joey, I said I’m not going, okay?”

Joey shrinks back a little. Good. Maybe it’ll stop him from asking stupid questions. “Sure, sure. I get it. But, you know, maybe we can hang out sometime next week?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” Wheels says, because he doesn’t want to say no.

* * *

Therapy. Yeah, right. At the last bell, Wheels marches straight out of school, out through the back exit. He wonders who’ll be maddest when they find out he’s skipping: Grandma, the shrink, or the social worker. It might be fun watching their eyes bulge out and their faces turn red as they lay into him. Whatever. That’ll happen later, once they remember that they’re supposed to care enough to get angry.

There’s nowhere he can go. He has to avoid going anywhere near the hospital or Grandma’s, obviously. The arcade was always his favorite hangout when he was cutting class, so if they start looking for him, that’d be the obvious spot. Schuyler Park. That’d be good enough for killing time. Sure, there’s nothing to do there, but at least he won’t get hassled.

Of course, as soon as he starts walking, he starts getting all worked up over shit that he can’t do anything about. What can he do? What can anybody do? He wasn’t even involved in the situation up until about a month ago. Maybe there was something somebody could have done, somebody who really was involved and didn’t have their own problems to deal with. Something could have gone differently. Back before the concert, maybe, or before that, back in grade eight. But that was then, and this is now. Now there’s nothing anybody can do to make it better.

He has to stop worrying about it. There’s no point in it. Spike doesn’t want him around. Fine. He never should’ve gotten involved. Just because Shane was a complete idiot who screwed up his own life doesn’t mean it should be Wheels’ problem.

Except it _is_ his problem. He’s the one who was stupid enough to ask Spike out, even though he should’ve known that it would make everything worse for both of them. He should've known it'd hurt them like this when (not _if)_ things went to hell. And he didn’t really give Shane much thought at all. In his mind, Shane was going to stay in the wobbly in-between, not dead but not exactly alive. Of course, he didn’t put it in those words. He was just thoughtless. Thoughtless and stupid.

Walking by himself in silence isn’t exactly helping him clear his head. And if he’s going to rehash unfixable things, he might as well have gone to therapy. Instead, he pulls out his Walkman. What tape did he have in there, again?

Nuclear Disaster. He never gave it a real listen, only had it playing in the background as he tried to study. The music was pretty distracting. Perfect right now.

He wonders if Spike wants her tape back.

Turning the volume all the way up, he repositions himself on the street. Schuyler Park’s not too far from school, so he’ll have to find some other place to go afterward. He considers staying out all night, maybe turning up on someone's porch at two in the morning looking for a place to crash. But Grandma would know something was up. She’d call the social worker and, best case scenario, they’d try to dig up a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be dug up. Or they’d throw him in a group home.

Hell, maybe going to a group home would be better. They at least wouldn’t pretend to care. He can practically hear Grandma screeching in his ear. _Derek, if you’re upset, you need to reach out to your friends_ — _except that one. She’s a slut._ Well, that’s not a problem now. Grandma will be overjoyed.

The park’s not quite deserted, but it’s usually a lot more full. There’s a handful of people, but no one from school and no one he knows. Every time he comes by the park, he remembers the time Joey got his ass kicked and he and Snake had to help him home. Everyone was pushing and shoving then, crowding them and yelling. Now he’s by himself.

Wheels doesn’t stick around the park for long—it gives him the creeps, seeing it all emptied out—so he falls back into his old cutting-class routine. He starts wandering off toward the guitar store until he remembers that he’s banned. Bastards threw him out for “manhandling the merchandise,” although it was probably to avoid calling anyone about his truancy. It’s the first time he’s ever been banned from somewhere without the Zit Remedy being involved. If they’d only called Grandma, he’d have gotten chewed out for a while. Then he could have come back and done it all over again. But no. Bastards threw him out.

Nuclear Disaster is screaming in his ear about who knows what. How can Spike listen to this all the time? Obviously, she’s got a lot to be angry about. Shane was a screw-up, even if he only screwed up once. Well, twice—even _Joey_ hasn’t been dumb enough to knock somebody up.

But no, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. Nobody does. Hell, Wheels is a screw-up too, and he’s come out in one piece. Physically, anyway.

Then again, he didn’t have anybody counting on him.

He wants to say that if Spike would only talk to him, it might help her. Except what would he say? Talking about it won’t help. It won’t undo the past year, or two years, or whenever this all started. Back in the fall, everybody kept trying to get him to open up, saying stuff like, _Just cry; you’ll feel better._ And sure, those kind of drippy platitudes never helped him, but what if that’s what Spike needs? How is he supposed to know what Spike needs?

The only chance he had to help came and went a long time ago, back when Spike was looking for his advice. He should have told her point-blank to give the baby up for adoption. A definite _yes_ back then would’ve been better for everyone now. Shane would’ve gotten on with his life, and eventually, so would Spike. And the baby wouldn’t have had to know that her birth dad was a scumbag who couldn’t give two shits about her. But no, the only thing Wheels told her was _you just gotta do what’s right._ Worthless.

He should stop wanting to help if that’s the kind of help he gives. Maybe that’s what they need: a bit of space. He could go to school and pretend not to see her. He could pretend nothing ever happened. If she really doesn’t want him around, that’d help her. Even though it won’t help him at all.

Past the guitar store, there’s not much to walk to, but it’s too early to start walking back to Grandma’s. Instead, he takes a different turn down a familiar street. It’s muscle memory, really. Or maybe it’s not, but either way he ends up at home—at his real home. The house with dead hamsters buried under the carrots, with the tree Joey broke his arm falling out of, with the level yard they tried sledding on anyway.

Mom and Dad would know what to do.

He stands in front of his old house like he’s waiting for something. Not that there’s anything to wait for. There’s a different car out front, but otherwise there’s no signs of life. For a minute he holds his breath and waits for someone to ask him why he’s there. No one does.

Nuclear Disaster is finishing up, so he rewinds the tape and starts walking back to Grandma’s. It’s six-fifteen by the time he gets there. Too early to plausibly have been at therapy, but who cares?

Grandma mutes the TV when she hears him come in. “How was counseling?”

“Same as always.”

“That’s funny,” she says, “because I got a call from the therapist’s office.”

Today, then. Today’s the day they’ll fight. Of course. “So?”

For a fraction of a second, she almost looks hurt. “What’s wrong with you? This is the first call I’ve gotten in weeks.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just wised up.” He heads for the stairs.

“Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you!” she yells. “Now, we managed to get you another appointment for Thursday afternoon. Are you going to go on your own or will I have to drive you?”

“Why don’t you cut to the chase and call Children’s Aid already?” He tries to sound as angry as he feels. It doesn’t work. It's the same argument they had a month ago, and a month before that, and every month since September, always the same.

Grandma purses her lips. “I am not going to have this argument with you again,” she says deliberately. "When you cool off, we can talk about therapy."

He goes upstairs.

* * *

Wednesday morning melts together in a puddle of exams and Zit Remedy jokes and little glimpses at Spike in the hallway. She looks like she’s trying to hide, or maybe blend into the walls and wait for everything to be over. Head down, walking fast enough to keep up with the crowds but not enough to draw attention to herself. He sees Liz a few times, too, but she doesn’t approach him again. And Wheels finally learns to keep his stupid little mouth shut, because anything he says will make it worse.

Apparently, Joey’s decided that if he doesn’t mention Spike, the situation will go away. Instead, all lunch he’s been talking about everything _but_ Spike, trying to fill the empty space with things like, “I think Ms. Avery is trying to kill us all with geography,” and “We are going to have the best time at the dance, I swear, as long as I get to go.” He runs out of stuff to talk about soon enough, so he and Snake start bickering over which type of sandwich is better, peanut butter or bologna. Wheels sits and half-listens.

The epic peanut-butter-or-bologna debate is threatening to get nasty when BLT runs up to the table, looking strange without the other guys from the basketball team surrounding him. “Hey, Snake!” he yells, waving a piece of paper over his head. “Sign this!”

“What is it?”

“A get-well card for Shane. We’re trying to get the whole team on board.” BLT slaps the card onto the table. On the front is a cutesy picture of a dog balancing a basketball on its nose, with _Heard you’re feeling ruff_ printed underneath. Precious.

“I thought we already sent him one,” Snake says as he fishes a pen out of his backpack.

“Yeah, but he’s awake now, so we got him another.”

“He’s awake?” Snake repeats.  “That’s good, right?” Wheels stares a hole into the wall.

“Well, not _great,”_ BLT replies. “Simon and I went by the hospital when we heard, but the nurses said nobody’s allowed to see him unless his parents let them in. We’re bringing the card by his house later.”

Snake glances at Joey, but he reserves his fixed stare for Wheels. He doesn’t even break eye contact to say, “Sure, I’ll sign.”

As Snake is scrawling something inside the card, Joey asks, “So, do you think they’ll move him up to grade ten, or is he gonna be in grade nine with me?”

BLT shrugs. “I mean, we’re hoping he’ll stay with us—nothing personal, Joey.”

Joey looks at Wheels with an unspoken question. And all Wheels does is stare forward, and bite his tongue, and shrug. He’s lucky. His glasses make it hard to read his eyes.

BLT takes the card back with a quick, “Thanks.” Snake locks eyes with Wheels again. _Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask_ —

The bell rings ten minutes early. “Another fire drill?” Snake groans.

“Yeah, really,” Wheels says, finally getting to breathe again.

“Hey, what if it’s not a drill?” Joey asks, slotting back into the role of jokester immediately. “Do you think we all get A’s if the school burns down?”

Snake pats him on the head like a puppy. “Keep dreaming, Joey.”

They shuffle out onto the patio and into the schoolyard. According to the handbook, they should be lined up alphabetically, but no one would have time to alphabetize themselves if there were a real fire, so no one cares. The few losers that were already out here scatter like roaches.

Except Spike.

She doesn’t move. Raditch zooms in on her before Wheels can even figure out why she’s out here with the glue-sniffers at all. She wouldn’t go down the same path Shane did—not before, and definitely not now. If not for her own sake, then for the baby. But there she is.

As if on cue, Joey shakes his shoulder and whispers loudly, “Hey, isn’t that Spike over there getting busted?”

He scowls at him. “Busted? What would she get busted for?”

“I think smoking.”

He doesn’t look at Joey. “Smoking what?”

“Cigarettes, what do you—”

Snake clears his throat and stares forward. Joey finally takes the hint and shuts up. And Wheels just watches. Spike gets dragged away to the principal’s office, and Wheels just watches.

* * *

He can’t even leave school right anymore. That used to be the one thing he could do, but no, Snake follows him out after the last exam. “Hey.”

He has to pretend to be normal, at least, or else they’ll catch him in another lie. Again. “Hi, Snake,” he says flatly as he walks out toward the road. “How’d you do?”

“Look.” Snake grabs him by the shoulder, something Wheels snaps away from without thinking. “Something’s up, I know it.”

Of course, because no matter what he can’t learn, he has to lash out at him. “Wow, you’re a genius, Snake. ‘Breaking news: things are happening.’”

“Geez, don't get mad at me.” Snake stands, hunched slightly over. The two of them probably look like they’re planning something illegal. If only. “You froze up when BLT started talking about Shane. I saw you.”

“I didn’t either.”

Snake sighs. “Look, I’m not stupid. I can put two and two together. Something’s up with Shane and that’s what set Spike off. Right?”

He hesitates for a second too long.

“I won’t tell Joey,” Snake says. “I just want to know what’s wrong with Shane.”

Everybody’s so worried about Shane, but not about the people he left behind. “Oh, who cares?”

Snake refuses to screw off. “What do you mean, who cares? He’s our friend!”

“He’s _your_ friend,” Wheels says with a scowl.

“Yours too!”

“Right, uh-huh. I _love_ hanging around with deadbeat dads.”

Snake stares at him, slack-jawed. “Oh, come on! He’s not a deadbeat!”

“He dropped acid and jumped off a bridge,” he says slowly. Why can't anybody get that through their heads?

“Just because your dad sucked—”

“Mike’s not my dad!” he says instinctually. “My dad’s dead!”

“Your _birth_ dad, then,” he corrects in an even voice. Snake thinks he knows everything. Snake Simpson, what a genius. “Just because your _birth_ dad sucked doesn't mean you should hold it against Shane.”

“Whatever.”

As Wheels walks away, Snake yells, “You’re being a jerk!” Wheels lets it roll off his back.

* * *

Letting himself inside on Wednesday is like unpausing that Nuclear Disaster tape. Everything’s unchanged from Tuesday. Grandma is still mad. Anything he says will fall on deaf ears. If nothing’s going to change and nothing’s going to get better, then it might as well be three years in the future. At least then he’d be an adult and he could strike out on his own. But no. It’s a Wednesday afternoon, he’s fifteen years old, and there’s a fight hanging in the air like rain waiting in the clouds.

“How was your day?” Grandma calls from the kitchen.

“Exams.” He drops his backpack on the floor.

“Have you studied for them?”

It would be a normal question, something any other grandmother could ask. But she leans over, hands dripping with suds, and looks at him like he’s the dumbest little asshole in the world.

He glares at her. “No, I wanted to fail grade nine,” he says as sarcastically as he can.

“Don’t snap at me.” Her arms are slack at her sides. “Can’t we have a single pleasant evening together?”

No, because an evening _together_ implies an evening that’s happening _now,_ in the middle of everything horrible that's going on. “I don’t know, can we?” At least that question brings him back to being a little kid, even if it’s the brattiest, most miserable time of being one. _I know you are, but what am I, Grandma?_

“Well, maybe if you’d just go back to therapy—”

“I’m not going!”

“Don’t you want to move on? Can’t you see that we’re all concerned for you?” She fires the questions out like insults.

He stands at the edge of the stairs and yells at her like the pissed-off little kid he is. “Oh, yeah, so concerned. If you were so concerned _,_ you’d listen to me!”

“You came home on Monday in a lather over a problem with your friend, and when I asked what was wrong, you threw a tantrum and stomped off.” All she ever sounds is annoyed. She doesn't care enough to yell.

He can't even deny that. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t been so rude to her, I’d want to talk to you!”

“Oh, for heaven's sake. Excuse me for not trusting your judgement.” She’s turning back to the dishes in the sink when she says, “A girl like that could get you in a lot of trouble. _You_ should know that.”

With that quick little sentence, everything he thought and hoped against comes true. “You look at me, and all you see is Mike!”

Grandma stops in her tracks. She says in an icy voice, “I don’t want you to end up like your birth father. Is that such a crime?”

“I’m not him,” he spits, and it’s truer than anything he’s said all year.

“Just because I don’t want to see history repeat itself—”

_“I’m not Mike and I’m not Shane!”_

The sentence rings in his ears. He's not like them. He doesn't manipulate his way into girls' pants, he’s not dumb enough to get anybody pregnant, and he doesn't leave kids on their own to fend for themselves. He's done a lot of idiotic things, but never in a million years would he end up like either one of them. And maybe now Grandma will get that through her skull.

She stares at him blankly for a second. “Shane who? Shane, the pastor’s boy?”

Grandma doesn’t know.

How does she not know? How could he not tell her? A week, a month, or a year of watching everything fall apart, and he never told her a _single fucking thing_ that was happening. “Spike’s kid’s dad is in the hospital” is as much explanation as he ever gave her, but _in the hospital_ could mean anything. _In the hospital_ means he could get better, and he let her hang on to that idea. Because she wouldn’t understand, or wouldn’t listen, but now he doesn’t understand and he can’t stand to listen to any more.

Now she’s standing there, forehead wrinkled in confusion, waiting for an answer. And for a second he looks at her and he sees her as she used to be in his eyes. Just his grandmother. No more, no less. In a flash, he remembers Christmas presents and cookouts and car rides buzzing with excitement. There was a time before she sniped at him and he screamed his throat raw over shit that doesn’t even matter now. She did care. She does care.

And so, he tells her.

He means to sum the situation up in a sentence, but he starts somewhere around “Shane was _so stupid_ —”, and hits “Liz couldn’t do anything,” and “she was crying so hard” before slowing to a stop at “Grandma, I don’t know what to do.” None of his thoughts come out fully-formed. They’re all ugly and raw in the middle. Every single thing he can think to say, he says without censoring himself. He doesn't swear, not to Grandma, but saying “she thinks he really wanted to die” burns his throat no matter what words he uses. His last sentence stays with him as he crashes on the lowest stair. He doesn’t know what to do.

Grandma’s knees crackle as she sits next to him on the stair. She puts an arm around his shoulder, and for once, he doesn’t shrug her off. “It’s a horrible situation.”

“I made it worse,” he says, staring at the floor. Now that he’s started talking, he can’t shut it off. He doesn't cry, but his pathetic little words flow like tears. “I said some really bad stuff about him, Grandma. I called him retarded, and now he’s like… actually…”

He expects her to tell him it’s okay, just because it seems like something she has to say. But she doesn’t. She won’t lie to him.

“I don’t know what you should do,” Grandma says.

For a second he thinks of saying, _You're an adult; you're supposed to know what to do._ But that's stupid. Only little kids still think that.

“This sort of thing is part of why we sent you to therapy to begin with,” she continues. “Perhaps if you asked Dr. Lewis…”

“What’s talking gonna do?” he mumbles.

“Haven’t you been talking to me? Do you feel better?” she says, and this time, it doesn’t sound like an interrogation.

“I don’t know, maybe.” He sighs, and when he speaks again, his voice is weak and small. “I wish Spike would talk to me.”

“Boy, that sounds familiar.”

The resignation in Grandma’s voice slaps him. She has to know as well as he does that the days have been skipping like a broken record, never moving past the same damn fights. He remembers the gut punch of Spike screaming in his face only once. Not every day for a year. He doesn't apologize—the realization is too heavy on his shoulders.

He’s careful not to hurt her arm when he stands up. “I’m going to my room.”

She stands up too, with significantly more effort. “Supper will be ready soon. I hope you’ll come down and join us tonight.”

There’s nothing malicious behind the request. Grandma stands and looks up at him, asking for only this one little thing after all the little things he’s done to her. So he says, “Yeah, I guess I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you things would start to get better! Very, very slightly better. Also: yeah, Wheels is obnoxious here, but if you don't want to slap him at least once, he's OOC. Chapters 10 and 11 will continue to improve things for him, and Spike too, don't worry.
> 
> I guess I should change that line in the summary to "updates whenever I damn well please." Sorry. Life's getting busy, but I'm doing my best! I'll try to have the next chapter out probably not this Friday but the Friday after (November 4). I'm not really sure why this chapter in particular took so long. :/
> 
> "The time Joey got his ass kicked" refers to 2x06 "Fight!" and again, Wheels "advising" Spike on what to do with the baby refers to 1x12 "Parents' Night." 
> 
> This fic really blew up!! I'm so glad you guys are liking it! <3 I hope you like it even when everyone is at each other's throats, lol.
> 
> Thanks to [commanderAIK](http://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderAIK) for reading through this draft. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update 12/21: It's been way too long since I've updated, and I'm really sorry. Writer's block bled into finals week, and then I had a hard drive crash... It's been a mess. But I'm doing my best to get chapter 11 together! I won't abandon this!

Thursday night is like a lot of other nights in Spike’s life. The apartment is quiet, or at least as quiet as it can be nowadays. Emma is trying to fling her blocks over the railing of her playpen. They bump against it with a soft _thunk._ Quiet rain patters against the windows; the TV is on but turned low. Spike sits at the kitchen table alone, dinner cooling and papers strewn around her. It’s June, but it could be January, or September of last year. Everything almost feels like it used to.

Slowly, Spike starts to sift through the papers. First the study sheets, irrelevant now after today’s exams. Then a pile of forms with a note stuck to the front:

_Spike,_

_Here are the correspondence forms I promised you. I hope you’ll decide to submit them after all._

_Ms. Avery_

She slides the pile off to the very edge of the table.

Next to them is the want ads, taken out of the newspaper and marked up in red pen. _Driver’s license required. Must have high school diploma or equivalent. Two years’ experience preferred._ All of them scratched out. The list of jobs she’s qualified for is shrinking fast. Even once she expands the search to include full-time jobs, there won’t be any work for her.

Still, she has an application in front of her, one she managed to pick up on her way home. The one-hour photo lab is looking for someone eager to learn as the summer starts. The pay isn’t great and the commute would be bad, but there’s no experience required and she doesn’t need a diploma. The questions are simple, and even with this year’s declining marks, her grade point average is decent enough to make a good impression.  

Of course, they _do_ only want sixteen-year-olds.

That was made clear enough in the ad. Sixteen years old or older, with eighteen-year-olds being given preference. If she pleads her case well enough, will they accept her despite that? They could take pity, if not on her, then on Emma, who had no choice but to be born into this situation. But then Spike would be walking into this job with _teenage mother_ branded onto her, with everyone knowing every single stupid mistake of hers.

Well, not every mistake. They wouldn’t know what had happened to Shane. Unless she made that part of her begging. But even the thought of trying to bring any benefit out of Shane’s accident makes her want to throw up.

So no, the people at the photo lab wouldn’t know _everything,_ but they would know _enough_ if she told them why she needs this job so badly.

_Date of birth:_

She’ll be sixteen at the start of the fall, right around when everyone else is starting grade ten. But by then they’ll have found someone who doesn’t need the job as badly. Someone who wasn’t willing to lie to get it.  

_15 September_

Emma can’t wait until September fifteenth.

_1972_

So she’s pretending again. Pretending that she’s sixteen going on seventeen, pretending that she’s not quite as desperate as she is. Pretending that if she tries hard enough, things will work out all right.

For a second, Spike remembers something she told Wheels a long while ago. _I’m not ashamed of having Emma._ And in a twisted way, she still isn’t. She isn’t ashamed of Emma. Not her little baby.

_If it was up to me, she’d have gone up for adoption!_

Looking at her now, totally enthralled with her blocks, Spike can't imagine giving her daughter up. Shane fought so hard for the two of them, once he came around and confessed to his parents. Spike didn't have to go to a home. Emma got to stay with them.

Maybe she should have given her up when she was tiny, before she really got to know her. Shortsighted. Stupid. Keeping her was an act of defiance against the world. That was it. But now, giving her up for adoption would be cruel to both of them.

If she gave Emma up now, her adoptive parents wouldn't tell her that her birth father was— what? Struggling through “special” school? Or warehoused in an institution somewhere?

Spike doesn’t hear the door open—she only realizes that Mom’s home once Emma starts squealing and slamming her block against the playpen rails. Even then, it takes her a second to look up.

“Hi, Christine,” Mom says, trying to juggle bags of groceries while she closes the door with her foot. “I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up after your exam.”

“It’s all right.” It has to be all right. Spike doesn’t elaborate on the exam or the long, rain-soaked walk home.

Mom sets the groceries on the counter. “Oh, you made supper.”

It’s just noodles. Soft, bland. Nothing special, but at least it’s something. “Emma’s always hungry coming home from daycare.”

Emma’s stopped slamming her block against the playpen. Instead, she’s grabbed onto the top of the railing and started shaking it with all her baby strength. Mom swoops in and picks her up.

Mom raises her voice over Emma’s squealing. “Was school any better today?”

“I guess. I picked up a job application on my way home.” Spike slides the half-finished form under the newspaper as if Mom could see her lie from across the room.

“That’ll be nice.” Mom’s voice sounds artificially light as she says, “It’ll give you a chance to get out of the house before school starts up again.”

School. “I don’t want to go back to school next year.”

“What?” Mom stands motionless by the playpen. Emma doesn’t notice—she pulls on Mom’s hair until Mom diverts her chubby little hands away.

“In September. I don’t want to go back.”

Mom sighs. “Honey, we’ve talked about this.”

“We talked about it _last_ June,” Spike says. Last June, when Emma was brand new and there was a different kind of uncertainty ahead of them.

“Christine…” Mom shifts Emma into one arm and slides into a kitchen chair, scooting beside her.

“I can’t make it work, Mom.” Spike stares at the spot on the table where the job application was. “I can’t. I can’t take care of Emma _and_ work _and_ go to school.”

“Well, school should be your priority.”

“Emma’s my priority.”

“I mean your second priority,” Mom says. “We’ll make it work. I had less when you were born, but we pulled through.”

“When I was born, it was just me and you.”

Mom holds Emma a little tighter. “Don’t you want to go to university?”

“No,” Spike lies. “I’ll work in the salon like you.”

“That won’t be enough alone, not forever,” Mom says. “You’re getting to be quite the young woman, you know.” She says it without judgement.

It’s true. She’s growing up. And more importantly, Emma’s growing up— standing, teething, slowly making her way towards speech. She won’t be a baby forever. One day she’ll be a grade nine student too, not a fake sixteen-year-old grabbing for any job she can get.

Mom sits and waits for a reply that isn’t coming. Finally, she gives up and says, “Well, you have the summer to think it over.” 

The summer. Not long enough.

* * *

Friday, Liz finds her at lunch. Spike sits on the front steps, not hiding but not wanting to be found. She's out front and not with the smokers. Liz will think that means things have gotten better since Wednesday, but really, Spike’s trying to avoid running into Luke again.

Liz stands above her on a higher step, casting the lower ones in her shadow. “Hi, Spike.”

"Hi, Liz."

She sits next to her and leans over. "What are you eating?"

So Liz is still normal, then. Maybe that's all she can be. Maybe the only thing Liz can do is pretend that nothing happened. If that's all she can do, Spike will hang on to that. She doesn't offer an apology, although one runs through her head. Liz doesn't offer one either. She doesn't need to; she was trying to help. Maybe, in her mind, telling the truth about Shane was the way to help Spike move on. Even if neither of them can know what _the truth_ is.

But there's no apologies. The understanding hangs between the two of them in something besides words.

Instead of answering, Spike lifts the plastic container of yesterday's noodles into view. They're cold.

"Are you feeling any better?" Liz asks.

"A little," Spike says, and that's a little true. Doing things for Emma gives her _something_ that she can do to improve things. Whether it's making dinner or applying for a job, it's something. Small. Probably worthless. But something. Emma will be okay today. She'll still be okay tomorrow. It's only the future putting them in danger.

"I called you the other day, but your mom said you were sick." Liz unwraps her sandwich. "How's Emma?"

Spike almost laughs at the question. It's like they're reuniting after months. "Fine. She's sleeping better— I think she likes the new nightlight more."

"That's good."

The silence is back again, but it's almost comforting. If Spike really had been sick, Liz would be asking the same kinds of questions and getting the same answers. And pretending that things are okay _could_ end up helping. After all, isn't that what she's been doing for Emma? Isn't that what Mom always did for her?

"The zoo's having a thing tomorrow," Liz continues. "Half price tickets for students."

"I thought you hated the zoo."

"Yeah, but I figured you and Emma might want to go." Liz looks vaguely uncomfortable at the suggestion, but she doesn't retract it.

"We might," Spike says. "I was going to take her to the playground, but I'll talk to my mother."

"You could do both. Zoo on Saturday and playground on Sunday."

She probably should go to the zoo— her grade nine student ID expires in September, so she won't be able to use it for discounts after that. But going on even one trip would be draining, let alone two. And the zoo is farther away, and would come with transportation issues, and would bring back memories of being in Emma's shoes only a few years ago.

"I think we'll just go to the playground," Spike says. "That way, you could come with us."

Liz starts to pick at her lunch. "I thought you wanted your space."

Liz's words sound more like an accusation than anything Spike’s said about herself all week. "I _did_ want my space," she says weakly. “Maybe we’ll stay home.”

She stares at her, expressionless. After a minute, she asks, "Did you get in a lot of trouble on Wednesday?"

So it's gotten out, then. People know. "They sent me home early," Spike says, glossing over the strangling smoke and the stares. "Mom understood. I had to make up the exam after school, though."

Liz snorts. "Fucking fascists. Shoot you for smoking, that figures."

"It wasn't that bad." Spike takes another nibble of her lunch. "Did you see me, or did you hear about it?"

"Both." The reply stings. "Heather came up to me and was freaking out about it. Did you really flip out at her before?"

"I guess I did." _I didn't mean to,_ she thinks briefly. Again. Another thing she didn't mean to do. She leaves the weak little excuse unstated.

"Okay, I wasn't sure," Liz says. "You know Heather— I thought she was making something up."

"No, I've been flipping out at a lot of people lately." The count keeps growing. Liz. Heather. Luke. And Wheels. Ugly little tally marks scratching her up.

Liz shrugs one shoulder in reply.

"Is it going around? Do people know about—" About the phone call last Friday night, or the screaming fight Tuesday morning, or anything from Wednesday afternoon. "—what happened?"

"Some of them. I think people mostly know what's up with Shane now," Liz says in a detached voice. "But they didn’t find out over the weekend. Wheels didn't know until I told him."

Spike doesn't ask why Liz thought it was any of his business, because then she'd have to start thinking of the entire messed-up, shameful situation again, and she can't pile more on herself while she’s trying to act normal. So she asks, "What are people saying about me if they don’t know?"

"You know, rumors. Standard stuff. Most of it's about Wheels, I think. Like he..." Liz trails off. "Did something bad to you, I don't know. It depends who you ask." She takes another bite of food to avoid the end of the thought.

Great. So even if she wants to pretend that nothing's wrong, no one else will. Everyone else will hand off twisted versions of May between themselves. Regardless, she'll have it staining her until she leaves school. And other people are involved now too, people who didn't have any reason to be cleaning up after her messes. Wheels, especially, is going to have the mark of _something bad_ on him, but Heather will too, being part of the rumor mill. Unlike Spike, neither of them deserve that.

"I think we will go to the playground after all,” Spike says after a minute. In straining to keep her tone light, she sounds like Mom. “This afternoon, though. On the way home from day care."

"Have fun," Liz says. If she wants to say more, Spike doesn't hear it. The bell rings.

* * *

Picking Emma up from day care is usually Mom's job, but Spike figures there's no harm in doing it herself as long as she lets Mom know. The people who work the counter have learned to suppress their looks of surprise, and the main caretaker knows them both by name. For once, things go relatively smoothly.

The playground, naturally, is near the day care. Emma squeals with excitement when she sees it, even as Spike puts a sun hat on her and makes her squirm. Emma crashes in the sand box. Spike sits on a bench and watches.  
  
It's an old playground. The paint is wearing off of the swings and the slide has scuff marks from hundreds of little shoes. Did Mom ever take her here, on a day like this fourteen years ago? Mom would only have been about eighteen. She must have known by that point that she wasn't going on to university. Or going anywhere, really. Just staying in the same neighborhood of the same city, working up until she died. She must have crunched the numbers and known that she was trapped.  
  
Or maybe not. Maybe she still thought that no matter the setbacks they had at the time, she and baby Christine were going to do something with their lives.  
  
Is Emma going to be okay?

Spike wants to think that she herself was doing all right before grade eight. Sure, she never had the best of anything, and sure, she had to deal with snippy comments sometimes. School Father's Day cards and family tree projects were the worst, but she made it through all right.

But things were different when Spike was a baby. Mom, in all her expert planning and scrimping and saving, kept them fed and clothed. Now they have another mouth to feed and the same amount of money coming in.

Shane's twenty dollars a month might not have been much, but it meant something. It meant help. Yes, it was naïve of her to believe that his support could do anything substantial. It wasn't going to keep her in school once the babysitter moved away and Emma had to go to day care. It wasn't going to save her from going to work. And yet, it meant that she and Emma had somebody who was looking out for them.

_You don't want to help! You just want to stop feeling guilty!_

She'd screamed it at him once, but was it true? Did she even believe herself at the time? Could they have made things work if she'd really tried?

It doesn't matter now. Even if the hypotheticals are choking her, clogging her mind, pulling her down, it doesn't matter. She needs to focus on what _will_ happen.

Emma digs her tiny hands deep underneath the sand, throwing it into the air and shrieking with laughter. It's been a week and she still doesn't know that something's wrong.

In five or ten or fifteen years, will she be ashamed of Spike like Spike's ashamed of herself?

She'll be a dropout's daughter, and a second-generation one at that. And worse than that, one day she'll have to know what happened to her father.

What if Emma ends up just like her mother, fourteen years from now, in the same situation? History repeats. That’s what they say. Even if, by some miracle, Spike makes it through high school and climbs her way toward a better life, Emma could make the same mistake she did. There’ll always be that risk.

She can’t let her know there’s something wrong. She has to put on a brave face.

Emma tries to stand up in the sandbox and slips, falling back down with a _whump._ She doesn't cry, but she makes a bewildered noise and stretches her arms out for Mommy. Spike reaches her hands out and gently pulls her out of the sand, smoothing everything over with, "You're okay. Mommy's here.”

* * *

By the weekend, she’s back to pretending again. She keeps herself busy around the house, chasing after the baby and keeping things in order. It’s nice to be able to straighten things up, even when she just wants to curl up and sleep the day away. Everything can be neat and tidy.

After a few days, she's finally clearing the table. Newspapers, folded piles of laundry, random scribbled notes. Off to the side, just where she left them, are Ms. Avery’s forms. Still blank. Still waiting.

Mom catches her hesitation from across the room. "What are those papers?"

"Nothing," Spike says. "They're not important."

Mom steps toward her and leans over her shoulder. "They look important."

"Well, they're not." Spike tucks the papers under her arm. She can't bring herself to throw them away.

An unspoken question lingers on Mom's face, but the phone rings and cuts her off. Spike crosses her fingers. _We didn’t notice that you lied on your application, Christine. When can you start?_

"Hello? ...Yes, she's here."  Mom lowers the phone, and Spike is hopeful for just a second. Then Mom says, "It's Erica."

Her disappointment solidifies.  "I'm not home."

Mom raises an eyebrow. "Yes, you are."

Wonderful. Spike trudges over and picks up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi, Spike!" Erica, somehow, sounds legitimately cheerful. "Heather and I were wondering if you wanted to come hang out with us today. We were gonna go to the mall."

"I don't know," Spike says quietly.

"Emma can come along," Erica offers. "Or are you still sick? Heather said you were sick." She lowers her voice. "You can still do fun stuff after a breakup. We have your back."

So that's what she connects it to. Just regular drama. Nothing too serious. "I don't feel like going.”

A silence settles on the line. "Okay, that's fine. See you Monday, I guess."

"Bye."

Spike hangs the phone back on the hook with a clatter. Mom is staring at her.

“Erica wanted to hang out,” she says, and the absence of an explanation is explanation enough.

“You could have gone with her,” Mom says. “I can watch Emma.”

“It’s all right, really.”

Mom says slowly, “You haven’t been getting many calls lately.”

Spike shrugs. “Everyone’s been busy.”

“I thought you said you would talk to them,” Mom says. Her voice is still smooth and controlled.  

“I don’t think I did.”

Some of the sympathy drains out of Mom’s face. She looks like Spike does during one of Emma’s late-night crying jags, having caught one or two glances of herself in the bathroom mirror. They get the same crease in their foreheads when they’re frustrated. “You must have _some_ friend you can reach out to. Have you started talking to Liz again?”

They may be talking, but they haven't really said anything. “Sort of.”

Mom doesn't examine that too closely. “And you just turned the Farrell girls down.”

“I'll see them Monday,” Spike mumbles, although in her head she's already trying to work out the logistics of avoiding them.

“Honey, you can't hide forever.” Mom’s mouth is pressed into a thin line. “What happened to Derek? He hasn't called all week, as far as I've seen.”

It's true. The phone would normally be ringing off the hook right about now. “I told him I didn't want to see him anymore,” Spike says. It's a cleaner version of the truth than _I screamed in his face instead of explaining what was wrong._ She and Emma have the same conflict resolution skills.

“Just because you aren't seeing each other doesn't mean you have to cut him off completely. You shouldn't wall yourself off like that.”

For a split second, Spike almost agrees with Mom. But then she thinks back on all the things that Mom doesn’t know about. The constant refrain of _Emma’s half mine_ _and I never get to see her._ Maybe it was all talk, maybe not. Now they’ll never know.

“It isn’t good to keep things bottled up. Babies can tell when you’re upset, you know,” Mom says gently. “And I can, too.”

Spike wonders when she’ll become psychic like her mother.

“We got into a fight.” Another lie. It’s not a fight when only one person is punching. “I yelled in his face.”

Standing under the kitchen light, Spike starts to understand. He just wanted to help, he and Liz and the twins and everyone else. He couldn’t help, not really, but he tried his best. And she shoved him away.

But why did he _want_ to help her? Why did he think she should get help? She can pretend to be fine for Emma’s sake, but she can’t ever completely wash her hands of what she did. What she did—and what Shane did, to whatever extent he was to blame—will always be hanging over her. How can she get out from under that?

Mom’s eyes are soft when she looks over at her. The two of them are about eye level now, although Spike can’t pinpoint when exactly that happened. “If you talked to him, I’m sure he’d understand.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Spike says, although with less certainty than before.

“It would make you feel better.”

“Mom,” Spike says more forcefully, “I’ll be okay.”

Mom still looks doubtful. “I want you to talk to _someone._ Think about it, please?” she asks. “If not for me, then for Emma.”

The suggestion presses on her chest.

* * *

 Spike can’t sleep at night, and this time she doesn’t have Emma to blame. It’s not because of Emma, or Mom, or the thunder that’s still rolling outside.

At three in the morning on a Sunday or a Monday or another nameless day, Spike wakes up. She’s frozen to the bed. It’s like a cheap little party game. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. It’s a game that comes bundled together with ghost stories, but not like this. Not with images of Shane covered in bruises, breathing ragged, coughing and spitting blood everywhere— on his shirt, on the pavement, on her— the blood is everywhere and it doesn't stop, _Shane just keeps convulsing and bleeding, and suffering, and dying—_

She’s frozen to the bed, but after a few seconds, she thaws. Okay. She’s okay. Emma’s okay. Everyone is okay.

Slowly, she walks to the bathroom. The tap is quiet. A splash of cool water snaps her into full consciousness.

Maybe she _is_ losing it. Maybe Mom’s right, and she does need to let it go. No matter how tightly the past month hangs on to her, maybe she needs to pick herself up and keep on going. If not for Mom, then for Emma.

The list of people she could talk to has dwindled down so much. Mom wants to, but what else is there for them to say? Mom knows everything already. Talking to her would be the same as talking into a tape recorder and playing it back. Liz, for all that’s good about her, couldn’t talk about everything as a whole _._ Spike would have to cut the situation into bite-sized pieces—dropping out and finding a job and disappointment and shame—and then hope that Liz could reserve judgement until the end. Erica and Heather are too distant. Their friendship was founded on music and parties, so when Spike changed, a little rift appeared between them, narrow but impossible to cross. And Ms. Avery, too, is on the other side of a split like that. It isn’t her fault. Their situations are just too different, because of their age gap and a million other things.

Wheels might understand, or at least try to. If things were different. If she hadn’t blown up at him. He’s no stranger to bad circumstance. Then again, for whatever happened to him, he was never exactly _losing it._

Is she losing it? Is it normal to lose sleep like this every single night?

Then again, what about any of this could she call _normal_?

She won’t be back next year regardless of if she’s losing it or not. However she spends this last week of school is how she’ll be remembered by her classmates. And in that case, she might as well start making apologies.

She flips the bathroom light off and heads back to bed. Emma’s nightlight is shining out into the hallway. Spike stares at it until the morning comes.

* * *

 Waiting out by the lockers on some nameless day, she feels like she's pretending again. The quiet early-morning hall feels too normal to be real. Like sitting with Liz or listening to Emma stir in her sleep. Not like waking up night after night with bad dreams. That’s too real to ever let go.

It’s not like she doesn’t try to push the worries out of her mind _(the blood, the bruises, and Emma staring at her through it all)_. As she waits, she tries to focus and think of how to apologize. If the tables were turned, how would she want an apology to be? Could she even accept one? She doesn’t know if she could. But she has to try.

_Okay. Apology. Then wait. Try to work things out. And don't think about Shane. Don't do it. Don't think about how he's going to rot in that godforsaken plastic room and you're going to drop out and Emma's going to be just like you—_

She takes a deep breath.

Wheels walks up alone, without Joey or Snake. Just normally, putting his books away. For a second he doesn't see her, only unlatches the locker. But then he hesitates. "Spike?"

“Hi, Wheels.” She attempts a smile.

He keeps his distance from her, standing slightly behind the open locker door. “What do you want?” His words should be harsh, but he sounds more numb than anything else. They’re both exhausted.

“I’m sorry.” Like everything else lately, it’s meaningless. “For everything.”

He doesn’t break his stare. “You didn’t have to yell at me, you know,” he says. “I wanted to help.”

“I know you did,” she says quietly.  

He looks at her again for a long minute.

_We had a whole month!_

_It was only a month._

He glances around the hall. It’s still mostly empty—no one cares what they’ll say, not right now. “It’s okay,” he says finally.

“It’s not okay,” Spike says with more force than she’s said anything lately, because no matter if he forgives her or not, it’s not _okay._ Nothing she’s done in the last two weeks will be _okay._

“Fine, it’s not okay.” He shrugs. “But I’m not mad anymore.”

That only makes the shame heavier in her stomach. “You should be.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Well, I’m not. I know you’re just upset.” The books slam inside his locker. “You all right? I mean,” he corrects, “are you any better?”

She wants to say something like, _yeah, I’m doing great now, thanks for asking,_ but before she can force herself to lie, she says, “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t reply, only stands there, waiting for the rest of the truth.

“I guess you know what I did on Wednesday, huh?” Spike stands pinned to the floor like a bug on a microscope slide. She doesn't hide, not now, but she still has to swallow the urge to.

“Yeah.” He doesn't quite make eye contact when he says, “I was really freaked out. Snake was asking me all this stuff about what was going on, but I didn't tell him.”

Spike thinks about how much she has to care about someone before she'll lie for them.

“I shouldn't have gotten you mixed up in this,” she says instead. “I know what I said, but it wasn't your fault.” Everything crashes together when she says, “It was my fault.”

Wheels slams the books down in his locker. The noise rings through the hall. “But it's _not_. If it's anybody's fault, it's Shane's.”

“It's not his, either.” And it isn’t, at least not fully. Not his, not Luke’s, definitely not Wheels’. And maybe not her own.

Wheels still looks skeptical. “Well, then it's not anyone's fault. Sometimes bad stuff just happens.”

“I know.” At least that much is true, even if it's cold comfort.

The two of them stand there in the hallway for a second. Spike remembers the first they stood there like this, on that cold day in December when things were even less clear than they are now. Even then, even when they barely knew each other, Wheels was still there, trying to help even when they were in over their heads. It should be a sweet memory.

“I heard there’s rumors going around about us,” she says to the floor.

Wheels scoffs. “Right. Luke’s an idiot. He tried to spread some shit around, but the rest of the basketball team got him to shut up.”

“That’s good.” It’s only been a week since it happened. She keeps forgetting that. “How are you?”

“Can’t complain.” He hesitates a little as he says, “Uh, my grandma sent me back to therapy.”

Spike tries not to think about what “ _back_ to therapy” implies. “How was that?”

“It's all right. He's not that bad.” It’s strange to hear him being so serious. He hangs behind the open locker door and says slowly, “I think talking about it helps. I know that sounds stupid, but I think it’s making it better, sort of.”

Spike thinks back to the handful of pamphlets Mom gave her and the concern they came wrapped with. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Wheels shoves his hands in his pockets, but he lets the thought die there. “You’re sure you’re okay? You look sick.” The words are barely out of his mouth before he winces. “I mean— you _look_ all right. You _seem_ sick.”

Even now, she almost smiles at the verbal backpedaling. “I don’t sleep very well.”

“Yeah, me either,” he says. “When do babies start sleeping through the night?”

“It’s not that. I get bad dreams,” Spike says, and shrinks away from the implication. She slumps a little closer to the wall of lockers.

“They’ll stop.”

Two words, said plainly. It’s as much reassurance as either of them know how to give.

Wheels shuts the locker. “If you want to act like nothing happened, I get it.”

If she were a better person, she’d jump at the opportunity. A do-over wouldn’t fix anything, but it might improve things even a little. For him, at least, because he wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore.

“That won’t undo it. And even if it did…” Even if it did, she’s too weak-willed to take the opportunity. “I’m sorry I kissed you,” she says, although it’s not true. After everything that happened, she still can’t quite regret it.

“I’m not.” He takes a step toward her. Just one.

She holds her breath for half a second in anticipation, but nothing happens. “I guess that’s it, then. That’s all I had to say.” Even though there’s a hundred other things she could say. _Thank you. I’m sorry. I wish it was different._ From the bottom of her heart, she wishes things were different.

She knows she should be leaving. She doesn't. She lingers for half a second too long. Inches a little closer, even.

He doesn’t leave, either. “Oh, uh,” he says, ”I still have your tape. If you want it back.” He pulls it out of his pocket. Instead of throwing it, he walks up to her.

It’s such a stupid little thing, but he kept it close to him.

In the middle of the hallway, Spike pulls Wheels close and hugs him. He reciprocates hesitantly, tape still in his hand. At least for a minute, things are okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ALMOST DID IT, GUYS. And by "almost" I mean eight days late. Oops.
> 
> "You don't want to help! You just want to stop feeling guilty!" is Spike's line from 2x01 "Eggbert" while "Emma’s half mine and I never get to see her" is a paraphrased version of Shane's line from 3x04 "Season's Greetings." Also, Spike works at the one-hour photo in _School's Out_ , so I thought I'd add that one in.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been reading and leaving feedback!! I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Special thanks to the entire r/fanfiction Discord chat for listening to my ranting, especially [commanderAIK](https://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderAIK/pseuds/commanderAIK) for helping with the final scene. :D


	11. Chapter 11

_Well, now what?_

It’s a stupid question, but it rings in his ears. Wasn’t going back to therapy supposed to fix everything? Wasn’t letting it out, or letting Spike let it out, supposed to make things better?

He should be able to talk about it, whatever _it_ is this time— Spike and Emma, Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Mike and Shane. Therapy mostly sat with him like a handful of empty promises. But Grandma wants him to go, so he tries.

Home (or Grandma’s house, whatever he wants to call it) is a little better. There’s a different kind of silence in the air after school now. He does the dishes, leaves his shoes by the door, keeps the TV turned low so Grandpa can sleep. Staying silent with Grandma is easier than talking to her. No one threatens to call Children’s Aid. If Grandma thinks he’ll turn out like Mike, she doesn’t say so. Maybe it’s better that way.

Since that day on the stairs, neither of them have mentioned Spike. Then again, there’s not much to mention.

Even with Joey and Snake, things are off-kilter. Wednesday, Joey’s jittery. In his neon orange Hawaiian shirt against the green of the schoolyard, he looks sort of like a hummingbird. He’s springing on the balls of his feet. “So I went to my parents and I think I'm getting ungrounded and if _that_ happens then I get to take Caitlin to the dance _and_ we get to have our sick pizza party! Wheels, are you gonna come? I know you're not going to the dance, but—”

“No, I'm going,” Wheels cuts in.

Snake stops—Wheels and Joey nearly bump into him because of the suddenness. “Wait, really? You're taking Spike and everything?”

Every time he considered asking Spike, he had to remember the fight in the resource center. So no, he can't ask her. Like with Grandma, he’ll have to keep everything painfully light. 

But he doesn't tell the two of them that. He just says, “No, I'm, uh, going stag.”

Joey glances at him briefly, but instead of replying, he gets distracted by a tree off in the distance. Before Wheels can see what he's looking at, he gives them a _“There’s-Caitlin-bye-guys”_ and sprints off. Snake doesn’t even blink.

“Whoa, what’s up with him?” Wheels asks in what he thinks is an offhanded way.

Snake scoffs. “What’s up with _you_? Caitlin’s all he’s been talking about all week.”  
  
“Give me a break,” Wheels says, bristling. “I've been distracted.”

Snake ignores him, instead choosing to gawk at Joey’s _wonderful_  flirting attempts. He and Caitlin are out of earshot, but his moves look awful. He's doing the yawn-and-stretch and everything.

“You two have so many girl problems. I don't get it,” Snake says. “You know how I got Melanie to go out with me? I asked.”

Oh. Damn. “That’s cool,” Wheels says, instead of asking when, why, or how that happened. If Snake wants to go out with little Melanie Brodie, that’s his problem. “I guess I'll just be… by myself, then.”

“You can hang out with Joey.”

Wheels gestures elaborately at Joey, who's loitering in the entryway and hanging on Caitlin like a lost puppy.

“Okay, good point.” Snake waits for Joey and Caitlin to head inside. “Well, I guess you can hang out with Melanie and me if you really want…” He takes one look at Wheels’ face and adds, “…or you can have fun alone.”

Wheels shrugs halfheartedly. The two of them stand knee-deep in the silence. “I—” Snake starts, but cuts himself off.

Kids run past them. All grade sevens and eights. They’re loud, but the noise doesn’t seem to reach the two of them. Finally, Wheels has to say _something_ , just so there'll be something in the air. “Do you wanna go play video games after school?”

“You've been kind of a jerk lately.” Snake gives him a wary look.

Maybe it was a justified breakdown, maybe not. But Snake won't ever understand that, and it wasn't his fault he got caught in the crossfire. “Yeah, I know. But we can still play video games, right?”

Snake doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, exams are over.”

Snake shoves his hands in his pockets and stares off into space for a minute. It takes a long time for him to finally look down and say, “I’ll meet you out front after school, all right?”

He nods. It’s good enough for now.

And yet it’s still wrong, standing on thin ice with so many people. It may not be like the spring, back when everything was broken, but walking into school still shouldn’t be uncertain. Boring, pointless, or miserable, sure, but never uncertain. At least he always knew where he stood back in the spring. As he lags behind Snake, he thinks of a couple dozen ways the school day could go. They range from the likely (“we’ll spend a lot of time doing nothing and waiting for marks”) to the implausible (“the school will get hit by a giant meteor”). Maybe something good will happen, even.

It takes a few minutes of shuffling around the lockers and making empty small talk, but he catches Spike eventually. Actually, she catches him. She's hanging with Liz when she notices him and grins—actually _grins_. She waves him over, but it isn't until Snake elbows him in the ribs that he manages to approach her.

Liz isn't grinning, but her glare is toned down from usual. Her eyes are narrowed, but behind that, there's at least a little glimmer of understanding. She slouches and doesn't say anything.

Neither does Snake.

Neither does Spike.

“Uh, hi.” _Smooth move, Wheeler._ He coughs and leans back against the lockers, trying to find the right amount of interest to show. Nothing too serious, not after yesterday.

“Hey, Liz,” Snake says loudly. “Did you get your math exam back yet?”

“No,” she mumbles.

“Well, I need to get mine too. You can come with me.” No matter if Snake's mad or not, at least he's willing to help him out. Maybe. Unless it's coincidence. They head out, but Snake doesn't look back.

Spike's still grinning from ear to ear, but she just says, “Hi.” She's a little twitchy, sort of jumpy.

“What's up?” he asks, about five minutes late to the party as usual.

“I have a job interview this afternoon,” she blurts out.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, Wheels remembers her scrambling for a job before everything blew up. “That's really good, right?”

“It is,” she says, but her smile wobbles a little. “But I, uh… do I look sixteen?”

He gives her the once-over. Not that he really knows what's supposed to separate a fifteen-year-old from a sixteen-year-old, but if he had to guess, he'd say she’d pass well enough. Plus, she's made herself up— she's got some of that blue stuff on her eyes. “Uh, I guess so. Why?”

“I sort of lied on my application,” she admits. “I told them I was a year older than I am.”

That stops him where he stands. Not that he has any real issue with lying in itself—especially in this case, it only makes sense—but it's _Spike_ lying. Spike, who wouldn't even lie to save face in front of Grandma. For a second, he almost lets himself get bitter over it. If Grandma had never known what was really going on, things could have been so much easier.

But that wouldn't have made anything better, and it wouldn't have made Shane okay.

So he doesn't say anything about Grandma, or the baby, or lying. Bringing it up won’t change anything. “They won't catch you,” he says. “You've got makeup on and stuff.”

She snickers. “I always wear makeup, but thanks for noticing.”

He attempts a smile and tries to think of something to talk about. Anything baby-themed would get back into Shane territory; anything to do with Grandma would get ugly fast. The dance is off-limits, and the sooner they forget about yesterday, the easier everything will be. And talking about the summer, even a summer that could be nice and full of dates and parties, seems like a cruel joke. _Nice weather we're having, huh?_

Luckily, Spike manages to find something safe. “Are you ready for report cards?” she asks.

It's a bit like asking if he's ready for a root canal. “Yeah, I guess. I think my marks have been getting better. What about you?”

“Ms. Avery basically told me to expect the worst.” She shrugs. “I'm sure you did well, though. You're really good at English.”

He gawks at her for a second and tries to figure out if she's kidding. She has to be, right? “I got a D minus or something last semester.”

“How? You remembered all that stuff about symbolism a lot better than I did.”

“No way.” He could drag the point out a lot longer, but something about Spike’s attitude makes him put a stop to it. That smile— somehow she really believes he passed. Maybe she's high. That’d explain it. “I mean, Joey and me were talking about marks, and he told me we could always fake our deaths if worst comes to worst.”

It takes her a second to laugh in utter disbelief. “Joey, you know, he's always full of great ideas.”

“You could come too,” he adds. It's kind of fun to kid around for a minute. “Well, I guess you couldn't if you have a job interview.”

“Right, because _that's_ the biggest problem here.” Her grin spills over into laughter. “Otherwise I'd totally fake my death and move to— where?”

“Oh, I don't know,” he says. “Wherever. I heard Calgary’s nice.”

“ _Calgary?_ If I'm faking my death, I'm going somewhere a lot better than that.”

“Oh, what's wrong with Calgary?” he asks in mock indignation, as if he's ever actually been there. It can't be too bad, whatever's there.

“If we're going to fake our deaths, we’re leaving the country at least.”

“Aw, come on, isn't that overkill?”

Spike wanders off toward homeroom, finally talking, bubbling up with words. And Wheels walks off too, wondering how long it'll last.

* * *

His own good mood, at least, lasts until Snake catches up with him after school. Maybe the arcade was a bad idea after all. As soon as he walks in, the smell of greasy fries and the sound of jangly coins bring back memories of cutting class. He can only hope this spring didn't ruin video games for him forever.

Snake looks a little uncertain too, and Wheels realizes the last time they were at the arcade together was right before he ran away. No wonder he's hesitant.

“Is Joey coming, or is it just us?” Snake asks.

“I didn't invite him, did you?”

“No, I figured you had important stuff to talk about.” Snake lowers his voice, trying to cover his words with the clattering of the arcade cabinets. “He doesn't know what's going on with Shane, I don't think.”

“I didn't tell him,” Wheels says. “Maybe somebody else did.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

They stand there in this morning’s leftover silence. Snake just has less and less to say. Pretty soon, Wheels suspects, he might clam up entirely. “What's been up?” Wheels finally asks. It's like he's talking to some distant cousin, somebody he sees twice a year at best.

This time, it takes Snake a second to say anything at all. “BLT and I went by to give Shane his card the other day.” He doesn't look Wheels in the eye. “His dad says he's doing better. I mean, he's at home, right? He's gotta be doing better.”

It's good the arcade’s so loud. They need it.

Snake stops talking, and Wheels knows there's no point in pushing him. Besides, if he makes Snake say anything else, he might hear something about Shane he’ll want to forget.

After waiting a second, Wheels tries again. This time, he puts words off to the side. “Uh, wanna play some air hockey?”

“Yeah. Sure.” At least that's something.

Snake sucks at air hockey, but then again, Wheels isn't out for blood. The clacking of the puck is distracting enough right now. It's easy enough to kill time like this. Snake barely looks down at the table anyway, but he doesn't make eye contact either. He stares over Wheels’ head.

So he's hung up on Shane. Well, that's fucking peachy. Sure, Shane didn't deserve it. Nobody deserves that. But he's not dead and he's not blameless— he definitely doesn't deserve to be mourned like he's either. If frying your brain wiped out your mistakes, Wheels would have dropped acid a long time ago.

Then again, this train of thought brings him back to Thursday’s therapy session. Dr. Lewis is sitting on his shoulder like an angel. _You have to start letting go of this misplaced resentment, Derek. It's not helping anything._ As if deadbeats deserve forgiveness. Some people—Spike, Grandma, and maybe Snake, if he comes to his senses—get a little wiggle room, a little freedom to mess up and fix it. But not everybody does.

Snake’s a shitty judge of character, anyway. He has to be.

It's not until Snake misses his third easy opportunity to block a shot that Wheels asks, “You okay?”

Snake stares down at the puck. It's on the table in front of his goal, but he hasn't put it back into play yet. “Do you know when he got out of the hospital? We… you know, we didn't ask too many questions.”

Great. “Uh, I don't know. Some time last week, I guess.” Wheels ducks his head.

Snake tears his eyes up from the puck, which is still sitting where he left it. “Didn't you have counseling? That's over at the hospital, right?”

“I didn't go.”

After a minute, Snake says, “What do you mean, you didn't go? You can't _not go._ ”

“I ditched Tuesday. Grandma sent me back Thursday.” Even after breaking eye contact, he can feel Snake’s stare.

“C’mon, you have to go,” Snake says, more irritated than concerned. “You don't want her to call the foster care people.”

“She's not supposed to threaten that anymore,” Wheels replies. “The therapist took foster care off the table, so she's stuck with me.”

Snake chuckles, but it’s a hollow sound. “Then why'd you skip?”

“I don't know,” he mumbles. “I didn't want to deal with it, you know?”

“Deal with what?” Even Snake knows there's a thousand things to deal with.

“Everything.” Wheels gestures to the puck. “You gonna pass it or what?”

Snake hits it back into play, but it barely makes a noise when it smacks into the side. “I guess you and Spike are still broken up, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He smashes the puck across the table— Snake scrambles to guard his goal. “I mean, if you ask her, we were never really going steady anyway.”

“What?” Snake says. He scrunches his face up, as if _this_ is the hardest thing to believe about the whole situation. “But you were all over each other.”

“Yeah, well, I guess Shane screwed other people over too.” _Smash._ Another goal.

Snake goes quiet again. “He wasn't a bad guy,” he says eventually. “He was just in a bad situation.”

“We're _all_ in a bad situation.”

“It's not the same,” Snake replies.

“Right, no, it's not,” Wheels snaps before he can stop himself. “Nobody _needs_ us.”

“Oh, get real. Like you’d know what he did or didn't do.”

“I know what he did.” Wheels glares over at him. He couldn’t openly egg him on even if he wanted to, but if the millionth fight of the week has to happen now, Wheels won't stop it.

Snake grips the air hockey mallet so hard it looks like he’ll shatter the plastic. Good. Maybe getting him pissed off will snap him out of this. “All he ever talked about was the baby, any time we wanted to hang out. That's how he was.”

“You make it sound like he's dead.”

Snake hesitates again, and it's a scarier pause than any he’s heard in a long time. “No, he's not dead.” He clamps his mallet over the speeding puck, stopping it. “We got to go to his room. He wanted to say hi.”

For Snake's sake, Wheels tries to shove all thoughts of Shane toward the back of his mind. He’ll give him a clean slate for five minutes.

“At first, Shane was asking about the dance, and we got all excited ‘cause we thought he might be able to go.” Snake looks Wheels in the face, but not in the eyes, when he continues. “But then he just kept going on and on about the card. For ten minutes, all he talks about is this… this stupid dollar-store card.”

Wheels tries to sort through his thoughts and find something good to say, but there's nothing. Anything he's been thinking would only make it worse.

“He asked us why we were there maybe five or six times,” Snake says. “He asked what ‘BLT’ stood for. He kept calling me Archie. He just… he wasn't…”

Snake’s words fail him, and he goes silent.

“He wasn't talking when Spike went to see him,” Wheels says, just to say something. He has to say something, no matter how useless it is. “That was the day Lucy had her party.”

“So? He won't get better,” Snake says quietly. “He was in a coma for almost two months. You know how badly that'll mess you up?”

“I mean…” he attempts, but the thought dies.

“When Spike got pregnant,” Snake says, “and everybody was teasing Shane over it, a lot of guys came up asking me why I was still being nice to him. I mean, I wasn't _that_ nice. I was teasing him, too.”

He teased him too. Everybody did. There must have been more moments, but all Wheels can think of is the time they tossed Shane’s little egg baby around. Shane was just trying to help Spike and do the right thing, and they all laughed at him and played keep-away with the egg. No one said anything or tried to help at all. They just let everything fall apart.

Of course, Wheels doesn't say anything now, either. The memory catches him by the throat.

“But they asked me, ‘Snake, why are you friends with him when he's such an idiot?’ So I told them, ‘Even if he's an idiot, he's still a good guy.’ You know?” Snake runs his hands through his hair. “ _You're_ a good guy. You messed up some, but you're still my friend, right?”

“It's not the same,” Wheels echoes.

“You don't think it could have been you in the hospital?” Snake asks, sounding tired and bitter like he got woken up in the middle of the night. “You don't think hitchhiking’s dangerous?”

“I could handle it,” Wheels says, but it tastes like a lie. He can't even handle this, the here and now, let alone hitchhiking. And if, somehow, he makes this situation worse, at least it won't end in him being dead on the side of the road. Even now, even here, remembered fear starts to bubble up, and he has to swallow it down with anger as a chaser.

For a second, Snake almost looks like he feels sorry for him. “Well, I guess not all of us are as strong as you.”

“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?” He leans over the table and tries to make Snake look him in the eyes.

He waits for Snake to go off on him, and for a minute, it seems like he will. “Look, neither of you—I told you, you’re both good guys.” But then he sighs and starts packing the equipment away. “I'm not friends with dirtbags.” 

* * *

Not a dirtbag. Right. Just because he went off by himself, ignored his all his friends, and almost died doing something _monumentally idiotic_ , doesn’t mean he’s a dirtbag—of course not. People still think he’s decent enough to defend. And decent, normal, not-screwed-up fifteen-year-olds always have their families standing around, wringing their hands and wondering if they’ll ever be able to do anything with their lives. Snake’s an idiot if he thinks Wheels is worth being friends with.

Wheels, like usual, ends up sitting alone. After almost a year at his grandparents’, his bedroom is still pretty sparse. None of his old posters have been put up yet, and the closest thing he has to decoration is the piles of dirty laundry dotting his floor. Despite that, it used to feel homey enough with the bass resting in the corner. Shit. Selling it really was a dumb move. It's not like he even got that much money out of it, and what he did get he mostly wasted anyway. The money could've been useful if he'd stayed with Mike, stayed away from home and hidden in Port Hope until everyone forgot about him, but now his fingers are itching to practice again and he's stuck.

He pulls out the book he got for that same birthday, the condescendingly-named _Young Learner’s Guide to Bass Guitar_ , and flips to the page with all the tabs on it. They could only wrap their heads around three chords, really, but that didn't matter much. Three chords were good enough for the Zit Remedy, until he hung them out to dry for forty bucks, or however much it'd been. He’s practiced in the air before—on the bus or wherever, trying to mimic what he heard on the radio—but that always came with the promise to practice for real at home, where his amp wouldn't just be sitting around, looking lonely and useless.

He sits on the edge of his bed with the book, its pages covered in little scribbles and slogans. There’s a _Zit Remedy never dies!_ in Joey’s scrawl opposite a note in Snake's block print. _G7 chord would sound good with this—backup for guitar solo???_ Looking at it again, he wonders if Snake has to try to write like that or if the neat, crisp letters come easy to him. It doesn't seem like he'd write like that on the basketball sign-up sheet, having to cram _Archibald S._ in next to names like _Luke M._ or _Bryant T._  Or _Shane M._ Well, there’ll be more space next year, then. That's a sick joke— right when the band breaks up and Snake can spend as much time on basketball as he wants, the team gets torn apart. No wonder Snake's willing to be friends with dirtbags. He's got no other choice.

And maybe if things were different, Shane would be sitting on his bed at home right about now, reading a sports magazine or whatever he used to like, waiting on dinner and report cards and the end of the year just like everybody else.

He might be sitting with the book, but Wheels doesn't try to “practice.” There's no point in it.

There's a knock on his door, but Grandma opens it immediately after, without waiting for a response. He's told her at least three times that there's no point in knocking if she's going to open the door regardless, but she _has_ started knocking, and that's fairly new.

“Oh, you're up here,” Grandma says. She leaves the door half-closed and hangs in the doorway. “I was wondering; I didn't hear you come in.”

“I was sort of late,” he replies— plainly, not defensively. “Snake and me were down at the arcade.”

She nods and purses her lips. “His mother called me in hysterics, you know. ‘Your grandson and that Joey boy are turning my son into a delinquent! First it’s alcohol, what next? Stealing car stereos? I’ll never trust him again!’” For a second, Wheels thinks he catches her hiding her annoyance. “I’m glad you weren’t with them, Derek. You don’t want a record hanging over your head.”

“They didn’t get charged with anything.” Not that anyone would know that talking to Joey, but Snake clarified it for him privately. Off with a warning.

“Well, even so.” Grandma sighs. “I thought those friends of yours were nice boys. Archie seemed to have a good head on his shoulders… I never thought he could turn into such a little hoodlum.”

Wheels has to take a second to even parse that sentence. If anybody’s gotten through this year with totally clean hands, it’s Snake. He’s the only one of them left intact after everything, the only one who’s ready to pack up and go to grade ten without this year beating down on him. The idea of calling him a hoodlum because of one stupid mistake is completely idiotic.

It hits him before he finishes his thought.

“He’s not,” Wheels says. He rests his elbow on his leg and his head in his hand, staring at the amp. “He’s my friend.”

“Your friends—” she starts, but stops short of whatever she was going to say. “Your friends don’t have a history of making good decisions.”

Bad decisions, like getting pregnant. Or maybe like drinking in public, or failing grade eight, or one of the hundred other bad decisions Joey’s made. There's no one he knows who hasn't done something like that. Dropping acid and jumping off a bridge. Hitchhiking and running away from home.

He says, “Well, me neither, Grandma.”

She’s still standing in the doorway, although there’s space on the bed to sit next to him. After a minute, she says, “Come downstairs. We’ll set the table for supper.”

Grandma asks him to, so he tries. 

* * *

For the fifth time in two weeks, there’s no fire at school. They’re standing out on the patio again waiting for anything to happen, whether the emergence of an actual fire or at least the arrival of some confused fire trucks. There's nothing, but that's better than the last drill they had. Spike’s standing in line near him but not with him. Just normal, just calm. It's nice, getting some fresh air when they should be in class.

Eventually they head back inside, grumbling and crossing their fingers for a freak June blizzard. Anything to get out of class, especially now—it’s the last class of the day. It’s not like they’re doing anything, just sitting around while Garcia reminds everyone to clean out their lockers and turn in their textbooks. But old habits die hard, so Wheels, at least, is still resistant.

Snake almost speeds past him—somehow, he’s invested in getting back to “grade nine checkout procedure”—but Wheels manages to catch up to him on the way back in. “Hey, Snake, wait up!”

He slows but doesn’t stop. For a second, Wheels thinks he didn’t hear, until he finally mumbles, “Hi.” It’s a drive-by greeting.

“Look, I’m sorry.” He looks away and apologizes again. He’s apologized more in the last two weeks than he has in the rest of his life.

Snake glances at him briefly. “For what?” It’s not a sign of acceptance— he must want it in words.

“I just am.”

Snake stares down at his shoes and looks like he's sifting through his thoughts, searching for words. “Sure, whatever then. I forgive you.”

Clearing the air might not actually do anything, but it makes it easier to breathe regardless. Now he’s only got marks to grapple with. They settle back inside and wait for report cards, but of course Garcia has to draw the tension out for as long as possible by asking about their summer plans. Alexa's going to some wedding. Heather and Erica are going away to camp. And Wheels is going to try and figure out how to scrape himself off the ceiling after Grandma explodes over his marks.

Finally, Garcia dismisses the class for the day (or at least doesn't stop them from stampeding out when the bell rings), but he calls over the stomping, “Derek, may I speak to you?”

_Oh, shit._

Right, he failed, because of course he failed, because even after weeks of studying with Spike and borrowing Snake’s notes and holing up in a corner with a stack of textbooks, he still couldn’t pass grade nine. And Grandma is going to kill him, or worse, she’ll be disappointed. How could she not be? Even when he tried to prove he could do better, it was too little, too late.

Garcia pulls out a report card and lays it on the desk. Somehow Wheels forces himself to go up and look.

“Several of your marks are not very good.” Biology. Geography. Even gym. They’re all marked with a bleeding red D-minus. At best, there’s English with a C-plus— everything else is even worse.

But there’s no F’s.

“Wait, did I pass?” He stares at the report card. Maybe it’s a misprint, or it’s someone else's marks, or something.

Garcia pulls out his grade book and flips back to the first semester’s marks. From bad to worse. That C-plus is long gone, and a few _incomplete_ marks have started popping up.

“Ordinarily, we would suggest you repeat grade nine.” He shoves the grade book back into the drawer.

Wheels’ stomach drops.

“However…”

Garcia hands the report card back to him, placing it in his shaky hands. “Because of your rapid improvement, and given the extenuating circumstances, we’re letting you move up to the next grade.”

He looks down at the report card again. No, that's his name down at the bottom. His ears are ringing even as Garcia starts talking about consistent study habits, because he's looking at the report card and the report card says something unbelievable. “So I did pass?”

“Yes, you—”

He tackles him in a hug, and even though it's a sweaty, awkward-angle, across-the-desk hug, _he still passed._ He can barely get his thanks out before he sprints out of the room. "Guys! I passed!"

Snake's already on his way home and Joey's in the grade eight hall, but Spike’s waiting for him. She’s smiling so brightly and her arms are so open that when she says, “Good news?” he hugs her tightly enough to almost lift her off the ground. She wraps her arms around him—she's so small! Has she always been so small?—and for a second he wonders if people are staring. Whatever. Let them stare.

She drops her arms first, so he does too, but she stays standing close, nearly resting her head against his shoulder. “So, good news,” she says dryly.

“I passed!” he says again, because despite the C-plus, he apparently can't form any words besides those.

“I heard.” She laughs. “See, I told you!”

“Yeah, well.” He must look like a total idiot, but Spike’s here and it’s the end of the day and he can actually show his report card to his grandparents. “We’re going to grade ten! We’re gonna be in high school— I mean, I know we’re _sort of_ in high school now, but we’ll be in the actual high school _building_ — and we never have to come back to junior high ever again! Can you believe it?”

“Well, we have to go home first,” Spike replies, but she’s still giggling.

Oh. That, too. “I can walk you,” he offers.

“How about I walk you instead? I don’t really want to go straight to the salon,” she adds quickly, turning a little pink.

Grandma might be peeved at that, but she’ll cool off after she gets his report card. He can still barely believe that— honestly, he’s one step away from pinching himself. So he says, “All right, sure.” 

For all his complaining about the distance between home and school, the walk doesn’t take nearly as long as he’d want. It’s too warm and too nice to last long. But still, even the ten minutes or so is good enough. They talk about Spike’s favorite band and Wheels’ pinball record and whether the pizza crust in the cafeteria is made out of the previous week’s leftover rolls. Anything and everything, really. Even the future, as long as they keep it in vague terms.

"How was the interview thing?" he asks, once they hit a low point in the great pizza debate.

"I think it was okay," Spike replies. "They didn't mind my hair. But they said they'll call me some time next week, however they decide." Her steps slow and she grabs his hand gently. "Thanks for asking."

"No problem." He tries to will his hand not to get sweaty. It's surprisingly tough.

"What'd you do yesterday? Just the usual?"

"Yeah, I guess. Snake and me went to the arcade and… talked. I beat him at air hockey." He smiles a little despite himself. "I mean, I go to the arcade a lot, so it makes sense."

"Isn't that expensive?"

Oh, right. He didn't tell her. "I, uh, sort of sold my bass."

Spike stops. "But you were so good!"

That's one hell of an exaggeration. "I was _okay_ ," he allows.  

"You were good," she repeats, and squeezes his hand. 

This time he lets her say it. It's nice to hear.

"Oh!" She snaps her fingers. "I have to stop by the grocery store on the way to the salon." She leans into him a little and says, "Sunday's Emma's birthday. I'm making a cake."

He has to stop and mentally crunch the numbers at that. "Oh, yeah, I guess it is." Holy shit. He knew it was around the end of the school year, but already? 

"Yeah, it's been a whole year," she says quietly, and trails off.

Well, now's as good a time as any to ask a stupid question. "Wait, so do babies _eat_ cake?" 

She stops and looks at him quizzically. "I mean, not all the time. But for birthdays and stuff, yeah."

"Well, I don't know. It's not like she's gonna remember any of it."

"Yeah, but I will! I'll take lots of pictures," she says.

"Then you can develop them at work, right?"

She hesitates a second before she looks up and grins. "Yeah, I guess I can."

They get to his door. Spike stands there in the strong daylight, not pulling back but not saying anything, either.

“I guess I’ll see you around, then.” He loiters a bit as if it were a stranger’s house.

She gives him a small smile. “Yeah, I guess.”

He could kiss her now, and it probably would be just as klutzy as the first time, and even more unbelievable, but on the other hand, it might work and it might be good enough—

—and before he knows it, Spike grabs him and kisses him. Spike's kissing him and it's _fantastic_ and it feels like—hell, he doesn't even know what it feels like, because whenever Spike's kissing him it feels like everything all at once.

She breaks it (because she must know he never would), smiles, and says “See you tomorrow.” By the time his brain turns back on and he thinks to ask about the dance, she's already leaving.

When he slams open the front door and sees Grandma, he practically flings the report card into her arms. “Open it!” he says, like he just handed her a Christmas present.

“You're later than usual. Did something happen?”

He rushes the words out. “Spike walked me home.”

“She walked you home?” Grandma hums disapprovingly. “Well, that's new. I never would have walked a boy home when I was her age.”

“Come on, Grandma, just open it,” he says, then tacks on a, “Please,” as an afterthought. Judging by how hot his face is, he must be bright red, but she doesn't comment. Thankfully.

She pulls the report card out of the manila envelope and for once, her eyes bug out for a good reason. “You’ve improved!”

He smiles a little, almost sheepish, and says, “Well, I couldn’t get much worse.”

Grandma ignores that. “Listen to this: ‘Over the past few weeks, Derek has really pulled himself out of the hole he dug the previous semester. Not only has he engaged with the material, he has learned to cooperate with his classmates to improve his study habits. I’m very pleased to advance him to grade ten.’” From behind the report card, she’s beaming. “That was from your English teacher.”

Raditch is a big softie, anyway, but Wheels doesn’t tell Grandma that.

“And a C-minus in French!” She skims over the D-minuses and the notes of warning. “How in the world did you do that?”

“Spike helped me out some.”

Grandma narrows her eyes. “Did she.”

“Yeah, and Snake helped me with math,” he replies, leaning over and pointing at the mark. Never mind that he still only got a D-plus.

“Huh. So you…” She holds the report card for a second before she says, “Your friends must be smarter than I assumed.”

Somehow, Wheels resists the urge to say _I told you so._

Grandma’s quiet for a while. “Well, I suppose we’d better put this on the fridge, don’t you think? Or do you have to turn it in?” Before he can reply, she flips it over and finds the signature line. She signs it with a dramatic flourish.

He takes it back. It sits in his hands for a while as he stands silently.

“So, tomorrow's your last day of school, then,” Grandma says, glancing into the kitchen. There's something in the oven, and it smells really good. “Is anything special going on?”

“Uh, the dance. Tomorrow night,” he says quickly. If he can head for the stairs fast enough, he can avoid too many questions.

It doesn't work. She calls after him, “Are you taking Christine?”

“I don't think so,” he replies, being as truthful as he can. “I'm hanging out with my friends.”

Grandma nods once, curtly. “Well, if you see her…”

He stops on the bottom stair.

She struggles visibly with the words, almost stuttering. “If you see her, I'd like her to know that I hope she really loves that baby.”

He stands on the steps a little longer to process that. Then he nods and walks away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long. :( It was a perfect storm of bad writing conditions. Chapter 12 shouldn't take nearly as long, and that's the last main chapter (though I'm considering an epilogue). Thank you to anyone who's still keeping up with this. <3
> 
> The reference to Shane's "egg baby" comes from 2x01 "Eggbert," of course. Edit: Forgot to mention, the scene where Wheels is getting his grades is a paraphrased version of one from 3x16 "Bye Bye Junior High," and the reference to Calgary specifically was a shout-out to _School's Out_.
> 
> Thanks to the r/fanfiction discord for letting me rant about this chapter. :)


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